The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I love the coincidences and serendipities of life, when people connect with each other or with places, and it is clearly meant to be, whether one believes in a higher power or not. My love for Tucson, where I spent most of my adult life to date, was born of, and strengthened by such coincidences. Finding that two old friends were also old friends with one another even though I had never connected them, meeting someone who had seen a unique moonrise from years before that I was unable to forget, and who had actually taken a photo of it at that moment, which he gave me. Meeting people in farflung corners of the world who knew my friends intimately. I am feeling such magical connections in my new home of Oaxaca as well. For the first time in my life, I have met someone familiar with the tiny town in Montana where I was born, and it was a Oaxacan man who happened to sit next to me in the airport. Connections seem to happen because they need to happen, because the people are destined to come together, even if I don't believe in fate.

Helene Wecker's work is full of this magic. The Hidden Palace especially. The lives of the characters are all interconnected without their knowledge for years. They approach and influence each other without either one knowing it, inexorably intertwining the threads of their lives into the beautiful final tapestry of the work. I have still not finished the emotional overflow from this wonderful book, even as I write this.



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