Godmother Night

Rachel Pollack's novel unfolds in a world much like this one, except that magic is real and not always safe. Two young women, Laurie and Jaqe, meet as students and fall in love, and their lives soon become entangled with Mother Night, a red-haired woman who roars through town at the head of a gang of leather-clad bikers and who is, in truth, Death. When the couple start a family, Mother Night becomes godmother to their daughter, Kate, watching over the girl and opening to her the hidden world of the departed. Told in a sequence of linked episodes, the book is a modern fairy tale about love, identity and the bargains people try to strike with mortality. It won the 1997 World Fantasy Award for best novel.