num_pages: 314
description: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKFrom Kathryn Harrison one of Americas most admired literary voices comes a gorgeously written enthralling novel set in the final days of Russias Romanov Empire. St. Petersburg 1917. After Rasputins body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River his eighteen-year-old daughter Masha is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his familyincluding the headstrong Prince Alyosha. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited Rasputins miraculous healing powers Tsarina Alexandra asks her to tend to Aloysha who suffers from hemophilia a blood disease that keeps the boy confined to his sickbed lest a simple scrape or bump prove fatal. Two months after Masha arrives at the palace the tsar is forced to abdicate and Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war Masha and Alyosha grieve the loss of their former lives finding solace in each others company. To escape the confinement of the palace they tell storiessome embellished and some entirely imaginedabout Nikolay and Alexandras courtship Rasputins many exploits and the wild and wonderful country on the brink of an irrevocable transformation. In the worlds of their imagination the weak become strong legend becomes fact and a future that will never come to pass feels close at hand. Mesmerizing haunting and told in Kathryn Harrisons signature crystalline prose Enchantments is a love story about two people who come together as everything around them is falling apart.
language: English
title: Enchantments
publisher: Random House