Winter's Tale
Mark Helprin, 1983
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
768 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544320420
Summary
Mark Helprin’s masterpiece will transport you to New York of the Belle Epoque, to a city clarified by a siege of unprecedented snows.
One winter night, Peter Lake—master mechanic and second-storey man—attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side. Though he thinks it is empty, the daughter of the house is home.
Thus begins the affair between a middle-aged Irish burglar and Beverly Penn, a young girl dying of consumption. It is a love so powerful that Peter Lake, a simple and uneducated man, will be driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature. (From the publisher.)
The book's 2014 film version stars Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown Findlay.