King Arthur and Lilacs

Lafayette

Lafayette

Man of Artistic Fingers
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About twenty years I read a book from my local library about King Arthur and his half sister Morgan Le Fay. In this story Arthur at (I believe) an early age falls in love with Morgan and through out the novel he says she smells like lilacs. Also in this story Morgan is not a villainess and is very unselfish. The story has a bittersweet tone to it and what so may be consider a sad ending.

A few years later I was thinking the lilac line would make a good song. In fact I think the whole story would make a very romantic ballad and I would enjoy re-reading it again.

I'm not by nature a very romantic person, but this touches me and I would love to make a song out of it.

The problem , of course, is I can't remember the title of the book or the author. I think the author is Harry Turtledove's wife, but I wasn't able to find anything like this with her name.

Can anyone help me? This annoyance has been bothering me on and off for ten plus years.
 
No, I can't reconcile her with anything Arthurian. If you're sure it was a female author, given the timescale, I'd suggest looking at either Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave or Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. It's been a while since I've read either, but your description of their relationship would put me in mind of MZB more.

Also, Stephen Donaldson's Arthur might be worth a look at - his depiction of their relationship might also fit.
 
I don't think it's the Bradley - I read that last year and thought it was pretty dire. Although she does have a one night stand with Arthur it's as part of a ritual, and it certainly isn't a tender love story.
 
[URL='https://www.sffchronicles.com/members/38516/']pambaddeley thanks for the lead.[/URL]

At first, I didn't recognize the title or the author so I had to do a process of elimination. I remembered reading it before 2007. Then I eliminated all titles with the description 'evil', from there I read the blurbs. When I ran out of blurbs I copied the remaining titles and authors and went to google and amazon.com. I found the description I was seeking at amazon.com then I read the first page. It wasn't kind of what I remembered, nonetheless it rang a bell.

The title I came up with is: The Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf (Rediscovered Classics).

Thanks to the kindness of my wife I ordered it.

In my search I came across some other titles that peaked my interest and added them to my list of books to read.

Thanks again for the link.
 
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