The Silver Bough

The Silver Bough by Lisa Tuttle

Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Spectra (December 26, 2006)
ISBN-10: 0553587358

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. One bite of a magical golden apple holds the key to a Scottish town's renewal and may grant the heart's desire for three lucky American women, provided they take a leap of faith in this enchanting tale from Tuttle (The Mysteries). In the coastal village of Appleton, Ashley Kaldis, who's recently lost her parents, traces her grandmother's roots; Kathleen Mullaroy works as librarian of the local (haunted) library; and Eleanor "Nell" Westray, a grieving young widow, cultivates a rare Scarlet King apple tree that produces the once-in-a-lifetime Golden Queen apple. This is the same apple that the oddly ageless Roan Wall, the town's recently returned prodigal son, was supposed to share some 50 years earlier with the then Apple Queen, who instead ran away to America, insuring Appleton's decline. Full of delightful characters, engagingly fey imagery and well-researched Celtic lore, this superior fantasy provides a juicy denouement fit for a queen.

Very strange.... the first half of this book seemed to read very slow for me. Once or twice I thought I was "lost" but then it began to come together, and I wound up enjoying the book.

I've never read any Celtic Lore and this was a good introduction to it.

Let me give you a little something from the middle of the book...

From: The Silver Bough, Vol. 1: Scottish Folk-lore and Folk Belief

The Celtic Elysium was situated not, like the heaven of the hymnist, "above the bright blue sky," but here upon earth; but, as it was a subjective world, its location was vague.... Sometimes it was a mystic green island that drifted on the western seas, Men caught occasional glimpses of it, half hidden in a twinkling mist, but when they attempted to draw near, it vanished beneath the waves.

The Green Island has been seen in almost every latitude from Cape Wrath in Scotland to Cape Clear in Ireland. Sometimes it was identified with a particular isle of the West.

"According to Irish traditions," says Professor Watson, "Arran was the home of Manannan, the sea-god, and another name for it was Emain Ablach, Emain of the Apples. This is, I suppose, equivalent to making Arran the same as Avalon, the Happy Otherworld."....

To enter this Otherworld before the appointed hour of death, a passport was necessary. This was a silver branch of the mystic apple-tree, laden with blossoms or fruit- though sometimes a single apple sufficed- and it was given by the Queen of Elfhame or Fairy Woman to that mortal whose companionship she desired. It served not only as a passport, but also as food: and it had the property of making music so entrancing that those who heard it forgot all their cares and sorrows.

I enjoyed how it was written, how from all things being "normal" to small things "just not seeming right"... it led you into the "otherworld" and back again without realizing just what was happening until it already happened. Overall... an interesting read!