Can there possibly be a more beautiful bird?” asks author Gregory Maguire about one of his characters is his latest book, “A Wild Winter Swan,” the story of a stunning, one-winged swan-boy who disrupts the life of a 15-year-old girl in New York City in the ‘60s.

“There’s the purity of the whiteness that makes them stand out against whatever background you see them in, whether it’s the sky or a lake,” says Maguire from his home in Concord, Mass. “There’s something about their size, too, as well as their elegance that make their descending presence seem like a visitation. They’re sort of like angels.”

But there’s a bit of a dangerous mystery to them, too, he says.

“Did you ever come across a turkey or quail while out in the woods and suddenly it explodes and rises before you? It’s arresting and terrifying but also awesome.”

Give Maguire a subject, idea, or image and listen to him expound in elegant and imaginative ways as one might expect from the author of such richly fantastical novels – many that take different perspectives of tales by Hans Christian Andersen, The Brothers Grimm, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, and Charles Dickens, among others. His books include “Mirror, Mirror,” “After Alice,” “Lost,” “Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister” and “Wicked,” which was the basis for the blockbuster Broadway musical.

Maguire says he was drawn to doing his own modern version of the Hans Christian Andersen story that tells of a group of brothers who were turned into swans by a witch, but were rescued by a devoted sister and magically…|CONTINUED|