A Wreath of pale White Rises [letter enclosed]

When a plant is cut across the stem and killed, it is said to emit a sudden aura like a geyser, its last radiance. In autumn, right before the foliage of summer dies, it grows much brighter than it ever was in life. ‘A Wreath of Pale White Roses’ explores aging and dying from a perspective rarely found in fiction, as a time of intensification of memory, pain, and desire, a period of passionate re-synthesis and completion. The four protagonists, Peter, Laura, Max, and Madelaine, are all related to each other not only in the present but in the distant past. As their separate lives cross for the final time, their earlier relationships are reactivated on a deeper level by the surrealistic resurfacing of the obsessions of their childhoods, enabling them to draw towards death re-united with the many lost parts of themselves which give their lives a meaning that transcends their tragic isolation. … A religious symbolism suffuses the setting of the novel, transforming the familiar New York City streets, churches, botanicas, and flower markets, lending these suffering “sacred pilgrims" an aura of luminescence emanating from the hope for warmth and light embodied in their striving. Erika Duncan’s writing, harrowing in its poetry, lays bare those parts of us that are long forgotten, long buried under many layers of social taboo, and deeply hidden from our ordinary perception. Yet it becomes a healing and a blessing for all those who seek to pave a roadway through the inner night. … This book was the winner in the publisher's search for a “novel of distinction by an unknown woman" to be supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.