The Wishing-Ring Man

Joy Havenith has spent her life as the ornamental granddaughter of a famous poet, beautiful but silent, present but never truly seen. The literary world her grandfather built is both her home and her prison, a fairy-tale existence that leaves her starving for something genuine. When she watches a young couple in love at one of his receptions, something cracks open inside her: she wants, desperately, to be an active participant in life rather than a decorative object in someone else's story. Then she meets a young man who sees her, truly sees her, and brings with him the promise of adventure and connection. Widdemer's 1917 novel traces one woman's awakening from ornamental existence to active desire, from living in the margins of other people's stories to claiming her own. It's a quiet feminist novel about the suffocation of talented women in artistic households, and the courage it takes to want more than what's been prescribed for you.