The Unknown Alchemist:The Unknown Alchemist began as a Triple Goddess Trials column, prompted by my prolific margin notes in Paulo Coehlo’s famous fable about a boy who learns all about his personal legend in the literary fable, The Alchemist. I was moved by much of what Coehlo wrote, but I wondered about the shopkeepers daughter he introduces as a passing encounter. I wanted her to have her own story–and I imagined her aching to define and live for her own personal legend in a seaside port village at the southern-most tip of Spain, only miles from Africa, in the middle of the nineteenth century. Thus began the voice of my main character, Esmeralda, who over the course of time, spoke more loudly and insistently for her story to be told. Esmeralda’s dream, intertwined with her mothers abandoned hopes, comes true in all the ways she never expected–or even thought she wanted.