A novel of a mysterious castle, unknown treasure, romance, and duplicity from the Victorian-era author of Lilith. “One of MacDonald’s very best.”—Richard Reis, author of George MacDonald’s Fiction This dark realistic novel is somewhat puzzling in MacDonald’s corpus of more uplifting works. Some of its disconcerting themes grew out of George and Louisa MacDonald’s friendship with author John Ruskin during a troubled time in the latter’s life. Some of the descriptive portions contained within this narrative, especially of the Swiss Alps, are among MacDonald’s finest. As Michael Phillips writes in the introduction, “Though the novel draws vividly on imagery from MacDonald’s trip to Switzerland in 1865, and contains passages of great narrative power, it is also of interest for characterizations thought by some to have emerged out of the circumstances of Ruskin’s involvement with Rose La Touche. As a result, commentators and analysts through the years have read into the work all manner of Freudian, Jungian, and sexual themes. Readers, of course, will see in it what they choose to see.”
