
Rene Denfeld is the author of The Enchanted (Harper), a novel which has generated much acclaim, including winning a prestigious French Prix award, an ALA Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and a Texas Lariat Award. I want to tell you while I still have time, before they close the black curtain and I take my final bow.” The most wonderful enchanted things happen here – the most enchanted things you can imagine. I see where the small men hide with their tiny hammers, and how the flibber-gibbets dance while the oven slowly ticks.

I see the golden horses as they run deep under the earth, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs. I see the soft-tufted night birds as they drop from the heavens. I see the secret basement warrens where rusted cans hide the urns of the dead and the urns spill their ashes across the floor until the floods come off the river to wash the ashes outside to feed the soil under the grasses, which wave to the sky. I see the chamber where the cloudy medical vines snake across the floor, empty and waiting for the warden’s finger to press the red buttons. I see the doorways that lead to the secret stairs and the stairs that take you into stone towers and the towers that take you to windows and the windows that open to wide, clean air. I see every cinder block, every hallway and doorway.


I am so lucky today to be joined in conversation with Rene Denfeld, the Portland, OR, author of the acclaimed novel The Enchanted.
