The Return of the Goddess: A Divine Comedy - Hardcover

The Goddess has returned. She's taken shape as a clay figure in the unlikely hands of an Episcopal priest's wife, an innocent event that ends up changing the lives of everyone around. She invades the dreams of a wealthy old woman who thinks women priests are a scandal. She entices a poker-playing, Black ex-convict onto totally unfamiliar terrain. Then there's the wild old man in the woods who's watching for a sign. In the struggle between Pagan and Christian values, between sex and the sacred, these and other remarkable characters are transformed utterly, united in an urgent call to save a sacred grove. Blackwood, an old estate in the Hudson Valley and the heart of this compelling novel, shelters an ancient stand of trees, a repository of healing power that will be lost to the world if the trees fall. Like forests the world over, Blackwood is under immediate threat from developers who worship no god but "the bottom line". Against these seemingly inexorable forces stand four human beings, awakening to themselves, to each other, to their own unsuspected strengths, and the irresistible, erotic, life-giving power of the Goddess. Theirs is a story rich with Divine and Human comedy, by turns irreverent and profound, outrageously funny and extremely tender. With remarkable psychological depth and literary subtlety, Elizabeth Cunningham writes in the great story-telling tradition of C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald - but from a deeply female, earth-centered point of view. For readers of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Ms. Cunningham's novel offers an added appeal. She tells us: The Goddess is Now. This is your life. She is happening to you.

Combining an exploration of the mystical with an intellectual point of view, this strange but captivating novel measures the relationship between pagan rites and modern Christianity. Esther Peters, mousy wife of a charming yet domineering Episcopal priest in a small Hudson River town, unwittingly shakes the foundations of her existence finds her world turned upside-down when she uses her sons' homemade playdoughsp per galley to craft a small statue of a fertility goddess. Suddenly she finds herself attracted to an ex-pimp; drawn to the magical estate Blackwood, with its feisty mistress and enigmatic caretaker; and questioning her marriage as she begins to examine her own religious beliefs and earthly needs. Before long a new religion appears to be taking root. With solid characterizations and a fluid narrative, Cunningham ( The Wild Mother ) gracefully crosses the borders of plausibility into a luminous metaphysical realm. If her prose is at times overwrought and the plot chock-full of happy coincidences, these weaknesses are easily ignored in favor of generally fine storytelling that brings an imaginative twist to the often cliched theme of a woman's self-discovery.
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