I enjoy reading fiction because novels take me to places I have never been and want to go to. But sometimes there are places that I have never been that I have never wanted to go to, but I am curious about them just the same. After reading a starred review of it in “Library Journal,” I picked up the book The Enchanted, which transported me to a very dark place that all of us hope we will never see – death row. The narrator is a man on death row who is never named, and who does not speak. We hear his thoughts and his imaginings. He re-imagines the prison where he is incarcerated as a magical place, populated by golden horses that run underground on nights when there is an execution taking place. He also imagines tiny men with tiny hammers in the wall who react to the goings-on in the prison as well. There are two other inmates on death row along with the narrator. They all have their stories – some are told and some are not. Then there is “the lady” who is hired by the death row inmates’ attorneys to turn over their death sentences to life in prison. She researches their histories, but she has a history of her own that gradually unfolds in time. The lady is close with “the fallen priest,” who has fallen from grace. The warden has a heart, but has his own cross to bear. The book is about magic and redemption in the darkest of places. The writing is superb and often sublime. I could not put it down. Denfeld is a journalist with expertise on prison life. This is her first novel.