magic lessons the prequel to practical magic

She was found on a January day in a field where the junipers grew, wound in a blue blanket with her name carefully stitched along the border with silk thread. It is a stay-up-all-night-reading-it book. While not quite as good as “Practical Magic” (nothing is), it’s a book I liked much better than I liked the middle book, “Rules of Magic”. She ends up pronouncing a curse, that will keep any Owens from finding love for long- and also learns that love is, in the end, all that really matters. Maria ends up having a lot of adventures on her way to Salem, and they don’t end when she finds her way there. They tell Maria she cannot stay with them, and she finds herself on the way to the New World, although not in the way that she thinks is happening. When her father makes a surprise reappearance, the three of them flee the area.

When her adoptive mother is killed by a witch hunter, Maria finds her birth mother- also a witch. She proves to have great talent for magic, as well as being taught to read and write. Abandoned at birth, she is found and raised by the local witch in rural England. The pre-prequel to “Practical Magic”, this book takes us to the 1600s and the life of Maria Owens. Magic Lessons is a “heartbreaking and heart-healing” ( BookPage) celebration of life and love and a showcase of Alice Hoffman’s masterful storytelling.

And it’s here that she learns the rules of magic and the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. Here she invokes the curse that will haunt her family. When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back. Under the care of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Nameless Arts.” Hannah recognizes that Maria has a gift and she teaches the girl all she knows. Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. In this “ bewitching” ( The New York Times Book Review) novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, beloved author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem, and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic.

Magic lessons the prequel to practical magic