The Magician's Assistant

What is to become of a magician's assistant without her magician? This is the question that Sabine asks herself after the death of Parsifal, the magician she has worked with for more than twenty years. Parsifal loved men, especially Phan, and though Sabine loved Parsifal she contented herself with his friendship. Now Parsifal and Phan are both gone and Sabine is left with full responsibility for their possessions. Always the assistant, her life is still defined by her service to Parsifal.

But in the world of illusion that Sabine has occupied for her entire life, things are rarely what they seem. According to Parsifal, he had no living relatives. Now, with his death, comes the news that he has a mother and two sisters alive and well in Alliance, Nebraska. Inevitably, the strangers will meet and Sabine will be carried away from her beloved Los Angeles to seek the truth of Parsifal's past in the bitterly windswept steppes of Nebraska in winter.

It is here that Sabine will learn the truth about Parsifal's father, which lies at the heart of his son's abandonment of his family and his identity. As the members of Parsifal's family turn to Sabine for help, she realizes that she is something of a magician herself. In this newfound strength, Sabine may at last find the kind of love she has always been denied.