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Published Mar 2010
368 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
There once was a girl who liked to pretend she was lost ...
Meg Rosenthal is driving toward the next chapter in her life. Winding along a wooded roadway, her car moves through a dense forest setting not unlike one in the bedtime stories Meg used to read to her daughter, Sally. But the girl riding beside Meg is a teenager now, and has exchanged the land of make-believe for an iPod and some personal space. Too much space, it seems, as the chasm between them has grown since the sudden, unexpected death of Meg's husband.
Dire financial straits and a desire for a fresh start take Meg and Sally from a comfortable life on Long Island to a tucked-away hamlet in upstate New York: Arcadia Falls, where Meg has accepted a teaching position at a boarding school. The creaky, neglected cottage Meg and Sally are to call home feels like an ill portent of things to come, but Meg is determined to make the best of it—and to make a good impression on the school's dean, the diminutive, elegant Ivy St. Clare.
St. Claire, however, is distracted by a shocking crisis: During Arcadia’s First Night bonfire, one of Meg’s folklore students, Isabel Cheney, plunges to her death in a campus gorge. Sheriff Callum Reade finds Isabel’s death suspicious, but then, he is a man with secrets and a dark past himself.
Meg is unnerved by Reade's interest in the girl's death, and as long-buried secrets emerge, she must face down her own demons and the danger threatening to envelop Sally. As the past clings tight to the present, the shadows, as if in a terrifying fairy tale, grow longer and deadlier.
"[H]er storytelling is as solid as ever, and the book is reliably entertaining. " - Publishers Weekly
"Goodman combines gripping suspense with strong characters and artistic themes. Those who read Anita Shreve or Jodi Picoult are likely to become fans." - Library Journal
"Passably engaging, principally for its meditations on the ever-shifting challenges facing women artists." - Kirkus Reviews
"Carol Goodman’s luminous prose and superb storytelling will keep you entertained into the late hours." - Nancy Pickard
"[An] atmospheric and magical book.... I’m certain it will be among my favorites for 2010." - January Magazine
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
I started writing at age nine, when my teacher introduced the topic 'Creative Writing' and I wrote a ninety-page, crayon-illustrated collection entitled The Adventures of the Magical Herd in which a girl named Carol lives with a herd of magical horses. I knew from that moment I wanted to be a writer and that I'd always find a way to rewrite my own life.
During my teens I wrote poetry and was awarded the Young Poet of Long Island award. I took a break from writing to major in Latin at Vassar College, where I fell in love with language and the Hudson Valley, two themes that would reappear in my first published novel, the bestselling and critically acclaimed novel, The Lake of Dead Languages (Ballantine, 2001). The novel is about a Latin teacher who returns to a girls' school in the ...
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