Adela Cathcart, Volume 2 — George MacDonald

Adelia Cathcart has an illness of the spirit -- perhaps an illness of the soul. No one can scry the secret of her malady. Until someone notices Adelia seems for a moment to come back to life as someone tells a story. We should read her stories, he says. Beautiful, beautiful stories. And these are the stories that bring Adelia back from her deathbed: stories like the tale of the Light Princess, the tale of a cursed girl like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty who weighs no more than a breeze. She has an illness of the spirit, too -- an illness both like and unlike Adelia's. . . .