WAKING ROSE

A Fairy Tale Retold

by Regina Doman

Chesterton, 2007

375 pages, $20.00

To order: fairytalenovels.com

Fairy tales have long celebrated the realm of the imagination.

But when an author transplants classic make-believe elements to the present day, does the charm remain?

In her Fairy Tale Novel trilogy, Regina Doman reinvents myths with a clever, engaging, and fiercely Catholic imagination.

Each volume corresponds to a Brothers Grimm story. The latest, Waking Rose, corresponds to Sleeping Beauty.

Doman transports her stories and characters to the gritty, menacing streets of New York for the first two novels and a deceptively pastoral rural Pennsylvania town for the last.

A quartet of young protagonists — Rose Brier, her sister Blanche and brothers “Bear” (Arthur) and “Fish” (Benedict) Denniston — face high school and later college and married lives generously but compellingly sprinkled with mystery, murder, kidnapping and deeply loyal friendships.

The novels tackle the all-too-real issues confronted by teens and their families: drugs, chastity, sexual abuse, marriage and divorce, abortion and euthanasia.

If this sounds like a heavy-duty menu of themes for a trilogy of books originally aimed at a primarily teenage demographic, it is.

Yet each concern is woven into the storyline in an unforced way, and thus, while the moral message is always clear, teen and adult readers will find themselves both entertained and edified.

There are hushed and affecting moments, as this Waking Rose passage highlighting the unreciprocated love of Rose for Fish — and its deliberate contrast to a fairy tale romance — illustrates:

“Alone, she sought out the dormitory chapel, which was empty. … It was as if something inside her had died — maybe an illusory image she had had of Fish all these years. He had seen it, and had killed it, deliberately, with his usual nearly passionless demeanor. … Once she had quieted herself, she was able to wipe her eyes, look up at the tabernacle and admit that it was a good thing that the phantasm was gone. It was better to live in the chill, stark world of reality, where things were not perfect, and so far from the ideal. Wasn’t it? But she put her head back down and cried again, this time more deeply. Not for the phantom that had died, but for her friend who was still wrestling, in a daily, invisible struggle, with a demon inside him that few people would understand or appreciate.”

That struggle involves dark hints of sexual abuse, which may be disquieting even for mature readers.

Each novel wraps up in a fairly tidy conclusion, but the complexity of the issues addressed transcends a simple “happily ever after” conclusion.

The main characters — who don’t compromise their distinctively Catholic moral principles, even when that choice presents hardship or risk — are likely to live in readers’ imaginations long after the last page is turned.

Kimberley Heatherington

writes from Fairfax, Virginia.