Book recommendations requested

[marydell]

I have a friend who is going through some stuff, and I want to send her a book that's

1. a fantasy 
2. is about a woman (preferably, anyway)
3. has some kind of journey or transformation in it (internal or external). 
4. is uplifting.  

Unfortunately she reads way faster than I do, and borrows books from me, so she's read most of what I have in my library that fits that description, including assorted De Lint & Gaiman, Tam Lin, and War for the Oaks.  But that's the sort of thing I'm looking for--something to bolster a person's belief in life's possibilities, without being treacly.  Also I'm not sending her anything elegiac or sad, despite liking those things myself, because now is not the time for those, so that's limiting my choices.

Help, o readerly friends?

Comments

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

When I'm in that mood, I'm awfully fond of Diana Paxton's Brisingamen. It's about a classics grad student, stuck in ABD-land, who comes into possession of an enchanted necklace connected with Freya. The magic is surprisingly subtle, and particularly interesting to any reader with Pagan sensibilities. But I always come out of a reread feeling much more balanced and ready to face life and move forward again.

Second Blake's Interior Life. It's out of print--I got mine on PaperbackSwap.