From Kathryn Harrison, one of America’s most admired
literary voices, comes a gorgeously written, enthralling
novel set in the final days of Russia’s Romanov Empire.
St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputin’s 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 family—including the headstrong Prince
Alyosha. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited
Rasputin’s 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 other’s company. To escape the confinement of
the palace, they tell stories—some embellished and some
entirely imagined—about Nikolay and Alexandra’s courtship,
Rasputin’s 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 Harrison’s
signature crystalline prose, Enchantments is a love story
about two people who come together as everything around them
is falling apart.
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