The Return of the Goddess

"The Goddess is returning! She takes shape in the hands of an Episcopal priest's shy wife. She invades the dreams of a grande dame who finds women priests scandalous. She lures a poker-playing ex-convict onto unfamiliar terrain. Meanwhile, a mysterious old man in the wood waits for a sign of Her return. Who is the Goddess? Where has She been for so long? And what does She want from the four human beings whose lives she turns upside down? As Esther, Spencer, Marvin, and Fergus confront these questions, they forge friendships across boundaries of age, class, and race, meanwhile discovering-and recovering-powerful erotic passions. Their encounters lead them deeper into Blackwood, an old estate that shelters an imperiled grove of trees sacred to the Goddess, which becomes their mission to save. The Return of the Goddess, A Divine Comedy marks Cunningham's first exploration of Christianity and the power of a divine feminine-forgotten, obscured, and suppressed by the Church-and takes the reader into the world of Cunningham's origins. Thirty-one years after its first publication, the book remains a classic in what has become a movement to reclaim the Goddess and embody Her return"--