Spinners

This gripping novel set in long-ago times explores the mysterious secrets that weave together the lives of a lonely crippled man and an innocent girl. Both are spinners, and each one is able to make extraordinary yarns.The girl spins at her wheel because she loves it, and she expresses her artistic nature as well as earns a livelihood for her and her father. The man also lives by what he spins, but he is driven to it by a destructive force. For when he spins on a certain wheel, pumping with his crippled leg, something so darkly magical happens that he can spin gold from straw. He holds this secret in his heart, a heart as twisted with bitterness as his deformed body.In the way she limned the age-old tales in Zel and The Magic Circle, and re-created their characters in a startlingly new way, Donna Jo Napoli, with Richard Tchen, spins her own story of the heights -- and depths -- to which love can take us. Wholly original in its imagining, this novel is amazing, tantalizing and horrifying all at the same time.