The Wood Wife
core novel 1996 The Wood Wife
Record
| First published | 1996 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.20 (3,614 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780312859886 |
Synopsis
The Wood Wife is a stand-alone novel that opens with the mysterious death of poet Davis Cooper in the desert canyons outside Tucson, Arizona. Maggie Black, a forty-year-old journalist and former poet who has just left Los Angeles and her ex-husband behind, inherits Cooper's remote desert home, even though he had earlier refused her request to write his biography; she takes the inheritance as tacit permission to pursue the project anyway. Settling into the house, Maggie begins reading through Cooper's letters and papers, which are interspersed with the story as chapter interludes, and starts to piece together his relationship with Anna Naverra, a Mexican surrealist painter and his late lover, who died by suicide after a period of apparent madness.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Wood Wife
- Series: The Wood Wife (novel) core; position 1 of 1 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Terri Windling
Awards (verified)
- Mythopoeic Award (Adult Literature), 1997: won; Confirmed directly via mythsoc.org's own comprehensive winners list: "1997: Terri Windling, The Wood Wife." Some secondary sources describe this as a '1996' win, matching the novel's publication year rather than the award body's own ceremony-year label; registered as 1997 to match mythsoc.org's own labeling, consistent with this project's existing year-labeling convention for award bodies that label by ceremony year.
Notes
- From the series record (The Wood Wife (novel)): A 1996 novel following Maggie Black, a journalist and former poet who inherits property in the Rincon Mountains near Tucson, Arizona from her late mentor, poet Davis Cooper. Settling in, she discovers mythical spirits inhabiting the desert landscape, drawn from Native American and Celtic traditions, while letters between Cooper and his late lover, painter Anna Naverra, unspool a second, interwoven story. Standalone; registered as a single-work universe (LOTR-analogy convention).
Sources
← The Wood Wife dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.