Parade

In a world of curses and transformation, the power of nature is never to be denied.

Enraptured with the beauty of women around him, Cassius moves through his world with the confidence of a king. And although he's lost sight of the woman he worships, he trusts that she won't be like the woman named Eva from his past, who still haunts his present. Assured of his own power, he ventures into the well-known Theater at his city's center, and it's there that he is confronted with a curse which will transform him in a way he's never imagined to be possible.

Cursed by a goddess he can't or won't understand, and beset by the very natural world he has always taken for granted, he struggles to overcome the world around him—not to mention the women whose independence and strength are beyond his own.

In the end, whether or not Cassius can accept the world will come back to his own understanding of the supernatural, and of nature, and it will be Eva whose understanding and being are the greatest questions to be answered.

Helfeld's Parade is a novel of magical realism that vibrates with the sensibilities of feminism and eco-fiction. In a study of nature and renewal, men and women, it offers a rich, entertaining vision worth falling into whole-spirited.