The Brides of Maracoor

Multimillion-copy bestselling author Gregory Maguire unveils the first in a three-book series spun off the iconic Wicked Years, featuring Elphaba’s granddaughter, the green-skinned Rain.

Ten years ago this season, Gregory Maguire wrapped up the series he began with Wicked by giving us the fourth and final volume of the Wicked Years, his elegiac Out of Oz.

But “out of Oz” isn’t “gone for good.” Maguire’s new series, Another Day, is here, twenty-five years after Wicked first flew into our lives.

Volume one, The Brides of Maracoor, finds Elphaba’s granddaughter, Rain, far from Oz. Comatose from crashing into the sea, Rain washes ashore on an island of seven women - the brides of Maracoor Spot - who spend each morning drawing blood from their feet and twisting seaweed into nets to segment time into daily portions. Days away from their years visit by a civil servant overseer - who ensures their number remains at seven - the women begin to fight over what to do with this strange girl and her talking Goose who, in disrupting their daily existence, intensify the ongoing power conflict between the two oldest brides.

And as the mainland of Maracoor sustains an assault by a foreign navy, the island’s overseer struggles to understand how an alien arriving on the shores of Maracoor could threaten the stability and wellbeing of an entire nation. Is it myth or magic at work, for good or for ill?

The trilogy follows this green-skinned girl from the island outpost into the unmapped badlands of Maracoor before she learns how, and becomes ready, to turn her broom homeward, back to her family and her lover, back to Oz, which—in its beauty, suffering, mystery, injustice, and possibility—reminds us all too clearly of the troubled yet sacred terrain of our own lives.