Heartfire (The Tales of Alvin Marker V) - Hardcover

Card, Orson Scott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312850549 ISBN 13: 9780312850548

Publisher: Tor Books, 1998

Synopsis

Alvin's wife Peggy makes a perilous journey to Charleston to visit the exiled king of England to plead for an end to the madness between the free nations and slave nations of North America, while Alvin journeys north to Salem, Massachusetts, to confront a legacy of witchcraft

About this title

Review:

This is the fifth novel in Orson Scott Card's popular Alvin the Maker series, based on an alternate America where some people are born with knacks, which resemble magical abilities. The protagonist of the series, Alvin, is a maker who not only can fix things (such as restoring a wounded bird to health with his doodlebug) but is also something of a natural leader. Alvin and his small band of followers are on a quest to build the Crystal City, a place where those who have knacks can live in safety from the people who sometimes burn them as witches. While Alvin visits the nearly holy province of New England to find out just how cities work, his wife Margaret, traveling under the name Peggy, journeys to the kingdom of Camelot, which was formerly known as Charleston, South Carolina. There she hopes to persuade the exiled King Arthur to help her abolish the practice of slavery. Heartfire is an excellent midseries novel that's sure to delight fans of Alvin. --Craig E. Engler

From the Back Cover:

"With delicacy and insight, incorporating folk tales and folk magic with mountain lore and other authentic details, Orson Scott Card has evoked a vision of America as it might have been."-Greensboro Tribune-Review

Peggy is a Torch, able to see the fire burning in each person's heart. She can follow the paths of each person's future, and know each person's most intimate secrets. From the moment of Alvin Maker's birth, when the Unmaker first strove to kill him, she has protected him.

Now they are married, and Peggy is a part of Alvin's heart as well as his life.

But Alvin's destiny has taken them on separate journeys. Alvin has gone north into New England, where knacks are considered witchcraft, and their use is punished with death.

Peggy has been drawn south, to the British Crown Colonies and the court of King Arthur Stuart in exile. For she has seen a terrible future bloom in the heartfires of every person in America, a future of war and destruction. One slender path exists that leads through the bloodshed, and it is Peggy's quest to set the world on the path to peace.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0312850549
• ISBN 13: 9780312850548
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 301