When She Comes Home

Zine
Title:	When She Comes Home
Publisher:	MacWombat Press
Editor:
Author(s):	M. Sue Waugh
Cover Artist(s):
Illustrator(s):
Date(s):	March 1990
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:
Fandom:	Beauty and the Beast
Language:	English
External Links:
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When She Comes Home is a 52-page digest-sized het Beauty and the Beast novel by M. Sue Waugh.

It was advertised as "a resolution of the third season."

Excerpt

Father reached up and covered the hand lying on his shoulder with his own. Neither Father nor son said more...there was no need. They were lost in their own thoughts and memories of the woman who had changed so much for them both. The woman who had loved them both unconditionally and had left them with the greatest gift of all...her love. His heart constricted, he couldn't breath, he sat frozen for several minutes focusing, just trying to focus on the feeling. He had felt this before. It was a small thing, a whisper somewhere around his heart...wrapping itself around his heart. It became an ember, warm and enriching, and seemingly endless in its magnitude. It was there...it was back...how had he lived without it. Now, occupying the same spot as his son's bond, and yet still separate from it, was the connection, the bond...or a whisper of it...that had been Catherine. How? How can this be?"

Reactions and Reviews

This well-written story rewrites events following Jacob's Naming Ceremony. Diana is dismissed and Catherine returns. Little is made in the way of an explanation, instead the author focuses on the beauty of Catherine and Vincents reunion and subsequent adjustments.

A lot of people have rewritten the third season, myself among them, and I've read several versions. But Sue's novelette touches the soul. She exhibits a real, compassionate under standing of the characters and what motivates them. They come to life. I was so absorbed, I expected to look up and find them in the room with me. Sue has discovered, in my opinion, the one perfect way out of the hole the writers dug for themselves.

Each chapter begins with a snippet of poetry, from various authors, that perfectly fits each situation. Event follows event with rhythmic flow—no sudden leaps, no scenes that don't ring true.

The love scenes, while perhaps not suit able for the eyes of minors, never once descend into tackiness. They are gentle, romantic, and exactly as you would want them to be. Life in the tunnels is described thoughtfully and thoroughly, and some questions about it are answered. Dialogue is, for the most part, true to the characters. Once in a long while it seems a little stilted, but then, if one imagines the voices of the actors saying the words, it falls back into place.

Proofreading is good; the few errors are easily overlooked by one's absorption in the story. (And nobody's perfect, anyway!)

This is a story that heals the wounded heart with gentle, loving hands. A dream is restored, love is real and does endure forever—"and death shall have no dominion."

Order it today!