Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

From the back of the book:
"Mark Helprin's magical masterpiece will transport you to New York of the Belle Epoque, to a city clarified by a siege of unprecedented snows. One winter night, Peter Lake - master mechanic and master second-storey man - attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side. Though he thinks it is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the affair between a middle-aged Irish burglar and Beverly Penn, a young girl who is dying of consumption. It is a love so powerful that Peter Lake, a simple uneducated man, will be driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature."

"We learn that justice may not always follow a just act, that justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected, that a miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned. Whoever knows this is willing to suffer, for he knows that nothing is in vain."

Winter's Tale is immensely more than the synopsis implies. It is not just a love story between Peter Lake and Beverly Penn, for quite some time Peter Lake isn't in the book (which disappointed me because I had just began to adore him when he disappeared.) There are so many different lives, over many years, that weave together to form Winter's Tale. There is an element of very subtle magic to this tale, a fog or mist people disappear into and a town you must have been to in order to visit, a town not on any maps, and a white horse of legend that presents himself to Peter. This whole book I was wondering where it was going. The author's writing coaxed me through most of the 748 pages, Mark Helprin writes beautifully. However, the last 150 were very tough to make it through.

I would not recommend this book to a casual reader, but if you love the feel of magnificently written words this could be the book for you.