Book description
So, what if someone wished for a fairy godmother to help the entire
city of Seattle? An overworked, overstressed social worker named Rose
Samson does just that when she makes an idle wish on a mustard seed.
Felicity Fortune of Godmothers Anonymous shows up to help. Rose Samson
is neither fashion-model beautiful nor a twit and she happily joins
forces with Felicity Fortune, a "Godmother" who demonstrates
that Grimm's fairy tales are still relevant in our humdrum modern world.
What nobody in the fairytales ever says directly, though, is that fairy
godmothers are on a magical budget so every possible way they can get
human beings or animals to assist each other they will try rather than
using up their magical means. Still, Felicity encounters many strangely
familiar situations. A pretty stablehand named Cindy Ellis is mistreated
by her cruel stepsisters. A rock star's daughter, scared of the super
model she married, runs away from home and encounters seven Vietnam
veterans at an encounter session and retreat. One of them might be a big
bad wolf, who knows? The hardest case is that of two children whose
parents have become so alienated and stressed out that they ignore the
needs of the kids. The children are offered help by a man who builds a
gingerbread house at the mall every Christmas. He is the modern day
equivalent of a wicked witch or Bluebeard (which is considered a
fairytale). He is the scariest of all criminals among us--a child
molester and murderer. The good news is, this is a story so we are going
to spoil it for you enough to tell you that the kids get away and the
wicked man gets what's coming to him. The story is grounded by being set
in and around a social-services agency in Seattle and by having a
central character who is sympathetic and realistic-but the author still
manages to have a lot of fun with the idea. In all their encounters,
Rose and Felicity try to blend their magical aid with realistic human
initiative and social responsibility. Scarbor Elizabeth Ann
Scarborough was born March 23, 1947, and lives in the Puget Sound area
of Washington. Elizabeth won a Nebula Award in 1989 for her novel The
Healer's War, and has written more than a dozen other novels. She has
collaborated with Anne McCaffrey, best-known for creating the
Dragonriders of Pern, to produce the Petaybee Series and the Acorna
Series.
