Description
<p>FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES<br /><br />At barely nineteen, Angelica Donovan became one of the more successful winners of the T.V. show Our Next Super Model. The world assumed she was destined for a happy, fairy tale life as ‘Angel,’ the beautiful girl who was living the dream; sadly, that wasn’t to be the case. As the years passed, she flashed her million dollar smile to all her fans and fought to stay on top in a profession where you never knew who it was safe to trust while the fashion industry took big bites out of her heart and soul. And trust was a constant challenge for Angel due to the painful childhood secret she guarded as carefully as she did her heart. As a result, she never did find her true love on earth.<br /><br />When she wakes up ‘dead’ from a heart condition a month before her thirty-fifth birthday, Angel is at first relieved to find there is no death, just a change of state, like ice to water, and then she’s scared because her biggest and most important adventure is about to begin.<br /><br />Angelica is chosen to be an angel in training as a spirit guide for three souls on earth! Her assignment is to help two women to gain the courage and confidence to find, recognize and embrace the love that had eluded Angel in life. But her biggest challenge will be to save a very special little girl from the same evil experience that had poisoned Angel’s own earthly happiness and altered the course of her life.<br /><br />Will Angel be able to heal her own shattered soul in the process? And will the three souls she is guiding be able to recognize her, not as a ghostly threat, but as one of those ‘friends in high places’ we all have; the kind who often end up earning their wings.<br /><br /> </p>
Story Behind The Book
King James I was a great witch hunter, and considered himself an expert on the subject. So why would Shakespeare write a play about witches setting up his ancestor, so to speak? At face value, it doesn't seem to make sense. However, a closer look at Holinshed gives us an alternative: "the common opinion was, that these women were either the weird sisters, that is (as ye would say) the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or fairies imbued with knowledge of prophesy."
Well, that is something altogether different! The word "weird" has its origins in the Saxon word wyrd meaning fate, or personal destiny. Some even attribute the first modern use of the word "weird" to Shakespeare. If you look at the Weird Sisters from the Scandinavian point of view, the word wyrd translates to Urd, one of the Norns of mythology who controlled the destiny of mankind. Presumably that would be more palatable than agents of the devil.
If we were to accept that the Witches were actually the Norns, their presence makes more sense to me. Like the Greek Fates, their will was thought to be unalterable. The Norns are said to appear at the bedside of a newborn and shape the child’s future. Hence they appear several times in my novel; their heavy guiding hand is never entirely far away. Although modern scholars tend to believe that Banquo and his heirs never really existed, if their genealogy is good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for me!
