East of the Sun, West of the Moon: A work-in-progress

Myth, mist, and magic combine in a fairy tale for grown-up girls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, will no one stop Sara Sonnenschein? Clouds sweep restlessly past the moon above the dragon-tailed tower as she stands shivering on a windy Copenhagen corner, wobbling on red high-heeled boots, on her way to meet yet another lover while her poor unsuspecting husband hammers away at his interminable opus on bog corpses.

You, Sara Sonnenschein, wild-haired American-born daughter of centuries of Baltic shtetl dwellers, you headstrong saintly passionate sorrowing lusting innocent who asks for nothing more from life than…well everything, the fairytale in which you live happily ever after and then some. why, little Sara, did you choose to marry him?

Opposites attract. Older Danish archaeologist, nervous Schubert-loving feinschmecker who insists that she translate his dreary books instead of being the artist she is? Little does he know, though he’ll find out soon enough, that Sara is living the eternal truths of Nordic myth and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales, and she’s finding out that nothing stops a woman ripe to become who she really is.

Along comes the bus; the cheerful one-eyed driver waves her on board. His wife, behind him, whispers into his ear, “Don’t you dare let her come to harm.” “Really, my dear,” laughs Odin, for it is he, the Wanderer, The Ancient One, The Riddler, The Bear. “She can get into trouble all by herself.”