"The Invisible Hour" by Alice Hoffman
The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman
FIVE STARS!
November 2023
I was anxious to return to worlds that only Alice creates with mystical ponds, ravenous rivers or endless oceans and the nature surrounding them. Simple words paint visual masterpieces, the dew at daybreak or streets glistening under the moon after a midnight rain. Delicious back stories of historical homes or ramshackle dwellings where her characters live to love or fight to survive. The passing of time is marked by the rising and setting sun, the seasons by ripened apples or sprouting shoots of green. From Mia’s red boots of rebellion to the peaceful salvation of the forbidden library, every part of her story feeds my literary hunger. There is always complete satisfaction when the back cover closes. Thank you again Alice Hoffman. -Kim Luke
Book Blurb-
One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?
Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.
As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die?
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”
This is the story of one woman’s dream. For a little while it came true.
