For two decades, Sabine has loved the magician Parsifal and served as his When Parsifal, a handsome and charming magician, dies suddenly, his widow Sabine — who was also his faithful assistant for twenty years — learns that the family he claimed to have lost in a tragic accident is very much alive and well. Sabine is left to unravel his secrets, and the adventure she embarks upon, from sunny Los Angeles to the bitter windswept plains of Nebraska, will work its own magic on her. Sabine's extraordinary tale will capture the heart of its readers just as Sabine herself is captured by her quest. Critical Praise: "Masterful in evoking everything from the good life in L.A. to the bleaker one on the Great Plains...: a saga of redemption tenderly and terrifically told." — Kirkus Reviews "This engaging, supple plot is played out against a backdrop of dreams, flashbacks, and long, elliptical conversations....With her quiet playfulness, Sabine's touch is as light and sure as that of the author who created her." — Boston Book Review "[T]he kindliness of The Magician's Assistant is beguiling, and Patchett is an adroit, graceful writer who knows enough tricks to keep her story entertaining....The real appeal...lies in the small, accumulating ways in which Sabine and the Fetters family assist one another out of isolation and sorrow. By the end, they have all been somewhat transformed — yes, by the magic of love." — New York Times Book Review "The [characters] have a wonderfulness that collectively can be unnerving. But mostly they ARE wonderful, as well as individual, smart and battling hard. There is something of allegory in Patchett's novel. There are times when its insistent current toward redemption risks flooding the life along the way, and there is a suggestion of the author's hand hovering at the sluice gate. Rarely does it do more than hover, though: rarely does the flood level do more than lap at the ingenious life and liveliness that Patchett has devised." — Los Angeles Times Book Review "Magicians — and their assistants — may be masters of misdirection and slight of hand, but novelist Ann Patchett is the real thing. Patchett does have a trick or two up her sleeve... — her controlled, evocative prose for one; the uncanny way she makes the most surprising twists seem absolutely inevitable; not to mention the wisdom and tenderness with which she portrays the illusions that keep lovers and families together and those that rend them apart." — San Francisco Chronicle Book Review "Patchett's third and finest novel....Patchett's lush and suspenseful story is also a portrait of America..." — New Yorker