Bless the Child [Mass Market Paperback]

Cathy Cash Spellman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2000

AN INNOCENT CHILD IN MORTAL DANGER.
AN AGE-OLD BATTLE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL.

Praised for creating fiction that "will keep you turning pages night after night" (The Dallas Morning News), bestselling author Cathy Cash Spellman imagines a terrifying realm of devilish menace in a novel that will touch your heart -- and chill you to the bone.

Vibrant, youthful, and a grandmother at forty-two, Maggie O'Connor has lovingly raised her drug-addicted daughter's child ever since the newborn appeared on her doorstep three years ago. But when little Cody is kidnapped and sequestered inside a satanic cult, Maggie's world is shattered by unimaginable evil. Drawing strength from the bond she shares with her granddaughter, Maggie vows to fight anyone and everyone who dares to claim this child for themselves.

Even the Devil.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With a seductive, at times spellbinding style, bestselling author Spellman ( An Excess of Love ) incorporates ancient myths into an entrancing romantic thriller. When heroin-addicted Jenna O'Connor leaves her newborn daughter, Cody, with her mother, Maggie, she sets an ancient Egyptian prophecy in motion. Destined in a previous life to be the guardian of this special child, Maggie must risk everything to protect Cody after Jenna returns with sinister Eric Vannier to reclaim her daughter. Eric, leader of a wealthy and powerful international satanic cult, makes unspeakable plans in the secluded hills of Greenwich, Conn., while Maggie begins a search for the ancient knowledge she will need to defeat him. Along the way she meets a host of diverse, interesting and well-drawn characters, each of whom plays a critical role in the struggle. With high melodrama and outrageous plot developments, this fantastical tale can be unintentionally humorous at times, but for the most part Spellman succeeds in capturing her reader's close attention as an unrelenting sense of foreboding drives the narrative forward with power and speed. Major ad/promo; film rights to Newfeld/Rehme Productions; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Spellman's corpulent, noisy, sagas with their pretzel plots (Paint the Wind, 1990, etc.) have dealt with earthly mayhem; but now we get a mammoth occult bash, much of the action taking place several mystical leagues off the ground and back all the way to ancient Egypt--with demons booming, gorge-rising sanguinary rites, and a cosmic battle of Satan's fan club vs. a grandmother. Maggie O'Connell's daughter, lost hophead Jenna, had left off her infant, Cody, at Maggie's New York apartment. But now, two years later, three-year-old Cody becomes the epicenter of a cosmic battle. It seems that Cody is really a Messenger of the goddess Isis and capable of Materializing the ``Isis Amulet,'' which will bring the absolute power of Good. Also awaiting Materialization is the ``Stone of Sekhmet'' (very, very bad). Slavering to get at the Stone and defeat Good is a cartel of slime-buckets who are big in drug and arms sales. The grue gang has readied a Connecticut mansion for a dandy Walpurgisnacht ritual. Cody is now the legal possession of a prime nasty who's married to blank-eyed Jenna, and he is being mentally tortured by a terrifying nanny, exposed to a cellar-ful of caged blood ``donors'' (called, with reason, the ``Screamers'') and other miseries. Grandmother Maggie is determined to rescue Cody and collects her allies: a soul-scouring priest, an aged mystic rabbi, a knowledgeable ``metaphysician,'' a police lieutenant, plus a team from Israel's secret army. With lessons in mystic lore, many travels back and forth to ancient Egypt, and uncovering of plots as the deadline to killer-rites nears, there's lots going on. The windup rescue in the crypt with a loud demon who's a whiz at dialectic is a wow. Occult twaddle with a surface scholarly sheen: it's all breathless and urgent--and will probably Materialize on the bestseller lists. (Literary Guild Dual Selection for May) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Pocket; Reprint edition (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743405978
• ISBN-13: 978-0743405973
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,563,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Best-selling author, Cathy Cash Spellman has had two successful careers and one lifelong avocation: Metaphysics and Alternative Healing. Her first career was as creator and marketer of new brands in cosmetics, fragrance, fashion and home furnishings. She was Creative Director at Revlon and the youngest Vice President of Bloomingdale's and at the that time, the only woman on their Board of Directors. She served on the Board of United Retail and the Upledger Institute and owned her own Marketing/Advertising Agency for seven years, creating brands for Chanel, Yves St. Laurent, La Prairie, Armani and a host of others.

Cathy's second career has been as a best-selling author of multiple books that have been on The New York Times Bestseller List, in both hardcover and paperback.

Best Selling Books she has written include:
So Many Partings
An Excess of Love
Paint the Wind
Bless the Child
The Playground of the Gods

Her books have been sold in 22 countries. Bless the Child, starring Kim Basinger and Jimmy Smits, was a successful Paramount movie in 2000.

During all of this time, she has been a student and practitioner of many esoteric disciplines: astrology, metaphysics, and a wide variety of healing modalities including Qi Gung, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Cranio Sacral Therapy, Homeopathy, and spiritual healing. She holds Black best rank in Goju-Ryu Karate.

Cathy invites you to visit her website at www.cathycashspellman.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars That's what I call a Thriller !!!!, January 16, 2003

By 

Dr. Bandy (Greece) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bless the Child (Mass Market Paperback)

"Bless The Child" is one of the best and most well-written books I've ever read. Having always been a Stephen King's fan on the supernatural-occult kind of thriller novels, I imagined it difficul that there could be another writer that could impress me even more. This book prooved me how deeply wrong I was!!! I found the book from a friend last year, I read it 3 times, with the same and even more enthusiasm and interest each time and it was the book I was really sorry, for having to give it back. I therefore, definitely, want my own copy. Unlike many books, this one is not a book you read once and then put it away. The reader gets so captivated from all the characters and the way each one of them interferes with the plot and contributes to it, that you really have to read it many times to really enjoy it as well as understand it as much as possible to every extent. Although a novel with quite ficticious aspects, (i.e. Isis's amulet and Sechmet's stone) Cash's wanted to make a novel based on real therories and practises, from many different cultures from allover the world, spanning a big historical period. For that reason, extensive research is obvious in her careful depictions and explanations of various schools of esoteric ideology and practices. Her characters and descriptions are well built and are definitely believable. (Ellie's and Peter's characters are fine examples that prove it). This breath-taking from start-to-end novel, will definitely trigger your appetite to actually do research and learn things on some of the subjects in the thematology used by the author to create it. An interesting bibliography is provided with this book for this reason.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Versus Evil and the Reader Wins!, November 15, 2001

By 

Diana F. Von Behren "reneofc" (Kenner, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bless the Child (Mass Market Paperback)

Having seen the movie before reading the book. I was prepared for a cutthroat struggle between good and evil. The material presented in the book, however is so much more multi-layered than the movie, it is almost a crime to allow the movie to have the same title.

Like the movie, the story revolves around the bond between Maggie and her granddaughter, Cody. Severed by the child's abduction by her mother and her new spouse, the bond triggers past life experiences to both Maggie and the child. Distraught, when she discovers that her daughter's spouse is the head of a Satanic cult and is going to use the child for some nefarious purpose, Maggie seeks help wherever she can find it, and an eclectic posse of assistants does she amass: a former cult member, an adept in the occult, a confused Catholic priest, a love-sick police detective, and a wise martial arts sensei.
As Maggie strengthens herself spiritually for the task ahead, we the readers are privledged to share in her enlightenment without any affront to our own beliefs. All the great mysteries are touched upon and Ms. Spellman knowingly provides a collection of reading material at the end of the novel for those interested in furthering their own spiritual quests.

A very satisfying junket from start to finish--would love to read a sequel which would reveal Cody's mature abilities.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars AVOID the horrible movie -- read the book!, June 11, 2004

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bless the Child (Mass Market Paperback)

"Bless the Child" is a pulp novel, but a classy one, and it kept me engaged to the very end. Even the truly absurd plot elements are believable due to Spellman's deft prose and her occasional sly one-liners ("Nicholas Sayles was almost beautiful, if you didn't take his soul into account"). She also has a true gift for writing vivid, believable characters, evil as well as good, and the banter she writes between buddy cops Devlin and Garibaldi is delightful.

Where Spellman falls short is in the rather dull, even annoying protagonist, Maggie O'Connor. I found myself not caring all that much about her, and wanting to skip over her parts to get to the other stuff. The book's main villain, Eric Vannier, is also fairly dull, at least until the end, when he comes alive. Spellman has a tendency to drop plot and character points, both minor (Ghania is introduced as speaking perfectly good English, but then inexplicably speaks broken English to Cody in a subsequent scene, only to go back to perfectly good English for the rest of the book) and not so minor (Sayles's death is not shown on-page). I must say that the sex scenes, which strive to be loving and sensual, are unintentionally funny, and if Spellman intended for ageing southern belle Amanda's use of the racist term "darkie" to be cute and colloquial...well, it isn't.

However, this is a most enjoyable yarn, one I've read several times. The movie based (loosely) upon it is absolutely dreadful; I advise readers to skip it completely and stick with the book.