Mary Gordon

Five women become close friends through a common devotion to Father Cyprian, whose special vocation is working women. Among the women there is one child, Felicitas, and the book reveals her development as an amalgam of them all.

It is possible in realistic fiction to create the witch as hero, but you must place her in another moral context, and you cannot call her a witch. The use of multiple contexts is an option of the writer of the fiction we are now used to, but you must be sure your values are clear to the reader.

Dracula: A vampire terrorizes the countryside in his search for human blood. Frankenstein: Tampering with life and death, Dr. Frankenstein pieces together salvaged body parts to create a human monster. The Mummy: An Egyptian priest who was buried alive comes back to life after an archaeological dig and searches for his lost love. The Invisible Man: A scientist discovers how to make himself invisible but can't reverse the process. He realizes with...