by Martine Leavitt
ages: 12+
First sentence: “I was sixteen years old the day I was lost in the forest, sixteen the day I met my death.”
I’m trying to get a handle on this book. I really liked it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s one of those books that’s really hard to sum up. Keturah gets lost in the woods for three days, and is visited by Death — in the form of a man. She pleads, cajoles for her life, and it doesn’t work. Then, Scheherazade-like, she tells Death a story, withholding the end until the next day. She heads back to her village, suddenly aware of how blessed she is for just being alive. As the story progresses, her stories and bargains with Death become increasingly more varied — she bargains for lives of those in her village, mostly because she cannot bear to see them die. As an addendum for all this, she has to find her one True Love, for only if she finds him and marries him will Death truly set her free. Full of earthy magic — it strongly reminded me of A Curse Dark as Gold — high romance, mystery and Life Lessons, it truly is one of those tales that could be called timeless.
Buy it at: Amazon, Powell’s, or your local independent bookstore.
The Book Nut 
Sounds like it might be a good read…
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I LOVED this book. I've been meaning to purchase it forever and just kept putting it off. Thanks for bringing back to my mind.
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I'm glad that you read this. I really enjoyed it when I read it last summer but like you I found it hard to synopsize! Thanks for posting. I took one of your recommendations and got Poison Study this past weekend. Can't wait to indulge!
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I really loved this as well. It's got one of those endings that some people just hate but I thought it was great. Glad to hear you liked this.
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Ohhh that sounds good! Now I'll have to go over to goodreads and add it to my to-read list and when I do I'll see this book in a list and I'll end up clicking on the list, and the list will show a random book cover that looks interesting, so I'll click on that book, and end up adding it to my to-read list and then I'll see that book in a list….look what you just did to me.
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Yeah, this one was such a good, thought provoking read for me. I'm glad you liked it.
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I enjoyed Keturah and Lord Death so now I will definitely have to pick up A Curse as Dark as Gold since you compared the two — been meaning to for awhile but this will push it closer to the top.
Casey
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