Michael James Timothy Curry. He is extremely handsome man, well muscled, with black hair and blue eyes. The son of Timothy Curry, he is forty-eight years old when we first take notice of him.
Born and raised in the Irish District of New Orleans, Michael was dissatisfied early on with the life he saw all around him. The men in his family were firefighters or policemen, but he possessed a deep love of education, music, and culture. Although Michael did not actively rebel against his lower-middle-class Irish-Catholic upbringing, he was “different from the start.” Living near the Garden District, he would wander past the large mansions of the wealthy and wish that he might some day have money to buy one of them.
His mother broadened his education by taking him to plays and movies, including foreign films: “ He fell into a trance in a darkened theater. He felt some visceral connection between what was happening on the screen and his own dreams and subconscious.” This exposure to European manners and architecture deepened is thirst for a better life. He sensed that his mother, who had once known a finer way of life, was deeply unhappy, and that she drank to numb herself to her surroundings and the lifestyle into which she had married. Michael wanted to avoid such a tragic existence at all costs, so he borrowed books from the library to educate himself.
One day while walking with his mother on First Street in the Garden District, Michael spotted a dark-haired man of genteel appearance standing in one of the yards. He continued to see this man again and again, despite the fact that his mother claimed she did not see any such person. On Christmas Eve when Michael was seven years old, he recognized the same figure in church. This time his mother saw the man as well, and it upset her. Michael did not realize it at the time, but “the man” – Lasher – had chosen him to participate in a scheme that would transform Lasher from spirit to flesh. (It would be several decades before this plan was realized.) Michael spotted the man in other places, such as at a violin concert, and never forgot his face.
Michael continued with his Catholic education, watching movies and reading books on the side, all the while nursing his ambition to do better with his life than those he knew had. One day, when Michael was seventeen, his father died fighting a fire. Soon thereafter, his mother took him to San Francisco, where he began to attend college, then graduate school. Michael developed a love for opera, Charles Dickens, Vivaldi, architecture, and history: “He loved above all to read well-written books about cities and centuries…which tried to describe places or eras in terms of their true origins, their sociological and technological advances, their class struggles, their art and literature.” Michael could not make the grades required to become an architect, so he became a carpenter, then a contractor, specializing in award-winning Victorian restoration. Eventually he founded a construction company, which he named Great Expectations after his favorite Dickens novel and wrote several architectural books. His success allowed him to achieve and maintain the lifestyle for which he had yearned as a boy; nevertheless, he felt like an outsider in California. San Francisco provided him with opportunities to achieve the life he wanted, but it was the warmth, character, and storytellers of New Orleans that he longed for.
During his time in California his mother died from an alcoholic-related accident, leaving him with only his aunt Vivian fro family. He had several romantic liaisons, one of which nearly came to marriage until the woman, Judith, aborted their child. Unable to forgive her, he withdrew and began to feel that his life was empty. It was at this time that he decided to go out to Ocean Beach, a decision that forever changed him.
Michael is knocked off the rocks by waves at Ocean Beach. He drowns, dying for an hour, but is brought back to life when Rowan Mayfair, sailing on her cruiser, rescues him. He awakens with a sense of having had a vision through which he had gained a purpose, but he cannot recall the details – only that he must return to New Orleans to accomplish some vague mission. As a result of his accident, he also develops psychometric powers through which he can see images from the things he touches, such as those who had recently died in his hospital bed or the face and thoughts of a person who had recently handled a certain pen. The images are so strong and pervasive that he dons leather gloves to free himself from their barrage. However, he wants to exploit this power if he can get back on Rowan’s boat and touch its deck; he hopes to regain the images from his near-death vision. When he cannot locate Rowan, he retreats into an alcoholic stupor in his house until he finally decides to go to New Orleans.
Through Michael’s physician, Rowan learns that Michael wants to meet with her. She agrees to take him on her boat. Despite touching the deck, Michael still cannot recall the vision. And even though he has fallen in love with Rowan, he insists on going to New Orleans. Aaron Lightner from the Talamasca follows him and asks him to read the Talamasca File on the Mayfair Witches before he contacts Rowan again. Michael does so, believing it is connected with his near-death vu\ision and his elusive purpose, but gains no real clarity from it. However, as the file describes the Mayfair’s house on First Street and “the man” associated with it, Michael begins to believe that his mission involves this house; it is the place where, as a child, he has seen the mysterious “man.” He now knows that this being was a ghost.
Just as Michael decides that his mission involves the house on First Street, Rowan arrives in New Orleans to attend her biological mother’s funeral; she learns that her mother was Deirdre Mayfair and that her inheritance includes the First Street house. She and Michael come back together there and eventually decide to marry, while Michael restores the deteriorated First Street mansion. They both know about the ghost Lasher because Rowan has read the file; they also know about the Talamasca’s conclusion that Lasher is trying to use the Mayfair witches – of which Rowan is one – to achieve his ambition of gaining a physical body. Lasher hovers in the shadows as they renovate the house.
After their honeymoon, Michael returns to San Francisco to pack up his belongings. Unknown to him, Lasher has begun to visit Rowan and to have sexual contact with her. While in San Francisco, Michael sees the ghost of Julien Mayfair, who urges him to return to New Orleans. Then when a car just misses hitting him, and he later sets his bed on fire, he realizes that these narrow escapes are more than just coincidence. He believes that Lasher has contacted Rowan and may be trying to kill him to keep him from returning to her.
Michael returns to New Orleans just before Christmas to find that Rowan’s personality has changed. He knows this is due to Lasher and he wants to combat him, but Rowan drugs Michael and sends him to Aaron. While he is gone, Lasher fuses with the fetus in Rowan’s womb and forces his own birth. He grows quickly into a full-grown man. Michael revives shortly thereafter and returns to First Street, but he is too late. Rowan has sacrificed their unborn child to Lasher’s evil purposes; through the birth of their son, Lasher has been born into flesh. Michael struggles with this bizarre creature, part child and part man, but loses the battle when Lasher knocks him into the pool. For the second time, he drowns. He also has a heart attack.
Just before he looses consciousness, Michael has a vision that he has been a pawn in the plan that the Mayfair witches had devised to help Lasher come through, so that through Lasher they could thereby gain immortality. Michael resists this interpretation of the vision because he cannot believe he would have ever been able to carry out such an evil mission.
Rowan had pushed the alarm button in the house before she left with Lasher, so firefighters soon rescue Michael. He recovers from his heart attack, spending two gloomy months musing over Rowan’s apparent betrayal of him to Lasher. He comes to the conclusion that she truly did not want to leave him and that Lasher had seduced her, and in the end Michael believes she will do the wise thing. He finds out that Rowan called Mayfair lawyers after she left, instructing them to let Michael live in the First Street house, and he experiences the irony that, through such suffering, he has achieved his boyhood ambition to own such a house. He also discovers that he has lost his psychometric ability.
Michael becomes extremely depressed, s Julien’s ghost decides to vitalize him by urging thirteen-year-old Mona Mayfair to seduce Michael. She creeps into the house one night and, with Julien’s help, manages to get Michael to have sex with her. Just as Julien had hoped Michael regains his vigor and prepares to look for his wife.
The Mayfair family helps Michael to try to locate Rowan. In the meantime, genetic done while Michael was in the hospital in San Francisco reveal that he is no ordinary man: like the Mayfair witches, he possesses an extra set of chromosomes – the giant helix. This means that, with a female who possesses the same genetic makeup, he can father a Taltos. This explains how Rowan was able to provide Lasher with the right kind of fetal tissue to be born as a Taltos – a creature that can grow to full height within hours.
While Michael is waiting for news of Rowan, he discovers Julien’s earthbound spirit in the attic room. Julien has been trying to get his attention because Michael has a mission to accomplish involving Lasher. From Julien, Michael learns more about Lasher’s nature and pact with the Mayfair witches. Julien also tells him that he can ensure Lasher’s demise.
Finally, the Mayfairs find Rowan, unconscious and near death. Although angry with her for leaving him, Michael remains constantly at her side and cares for her until Lasher shows up to tell Michael his story. Michael once had expressed an interest in knowing more about this creature, but now he desperately wants to kill Lasher for the physical and mental abuse he inflicted on Rowan. However, investigators from the Talamasca who arrive with Lasher restrain Michael from such violence. Michael then listens to Lasher and, with Julien’s help, manages to kill him by using a hammer to smash his skull. He buries Lasher under Deirdre’s Oak. Rowan eventually recovers and explains to Michael what happened to her.
It is soon discovered that Mona is pregnant with Michael’s child, and while he is happy that he has another chance to be a father, indications that he is in fact Julien Mayfair’s descendant makes him uneasy. He later comes to the realization that Lasher chose him to father Rowan’s child because he is a witch from the same Celtic roots as Rowan. Although he acknowledges the power within him to do some of the things that Rowan does, he fears it. He accompanies Rowan to London as she strives to avenge Aaron Lightner’s death. He too would like to kill those members of the Talamasca responsible for Aaron’s murder, but his compassionate side requires that the perpetrators be given the chance to defend themselves.
In London, he and Rowan meet the ancient Taltos Ashlar – to whom he is strongly attracted – as well as Samuel, the dwarf. As Michael listens to Ashlar’s story and the story of the Taltos tribe, he realizes that two humans from the clan of Donnelaith can produce a Taltos together, just as he and Rowan did. Michael returns to New Orleans after Rowan accomplishes her mission, only to discover that Mona – who had ascentrained from Lasher’s genealogies that Michael is a Mayfair – has given birth to a female Taltos, Morrigan. When Michael first sees his new daughter, he nearly collapses with a coronary. He realizes now that his own seed has produced two such creatures, and it shocks him to acknowledge his witch’s blood. He must also face the ethical dilemma his friendship with Ashlar poses. As a member of a species that, should he start mating again, could wipe out humankind from the earth, Ashlar also faces extinction himself if he does not find a mate. Michael struggles over what to do about Morrigan, a possible mate for Ashlar, and when Ashlar finds her himself and runs off with her, Michael offers his blessing to their union.
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