Synopsis: West Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter, Gertie. Now, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara's farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister, Fawn. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that suddenly proves perilous when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished without a trace. Searching for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea's diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother's bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked deeper into the mystery of Sara's fate, she discovers that she's not the only person who's desperately looking for someone that they've lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself.
Review: I had a hard time getting into The Winter People. I stopped and restarted and stopped and restarted several times before it took. I'm glad I kept trying and kept reading a bit further each time because once I was into the guts of the tale it did not let me go.
With plenty of lost girls of all ages and shades of "The Monkey's Paw", The Winter People is a story spanning generations of women - women who are haunted by loss, by memory, by regrets. As the story unravels we learn the stories of these women - distant in time - whose lives intersect in the kind of echo that reverberates across time - each echo changing the essential sound although that first sound remains. Mothers who lose their children, children who lose their mothers, families who lose their men. This world is cold and still and something wicked lurks in the woods that are the intersection of these stories.
The Winter People is atmospheric. It is haunted and tragic and beautiful. Sara and Gertie, Alice and Ruthie and Fawn, and maybe most of all Auntie are characters rich and full of life and of grief and of determination. I found myself reading compulsively - I couldn't wait to find out what would happen next. The story captured my imagination and left me with its own resounding set of questions: What would you do if you could bring someone back from the dead - would you? How would that turn out? Joy or pain or just plain cold longing? A great read I was sorry to finish.
FTC Disclosure: Advance copy from the publisher
Publishing Information: Doubleday - February 11, 2014
Format: Kindle
Rating: ★★★★
First Line: My beloved aunt, Sara Harrison Shea, was brutally murdered in the winter of 1908.
Random Quote: I have promised to tell you everything I know about sleepers. But before you go on, you must understand that this is powerful magic. Only do it if you are sure. Once it is done, there can be no going back.
| Vermont woods in winter (image source) |
Review: I had a hard time getting into The Winter People. I stopped and restarted and stopped and restarted several times before it took. I'm glad I kept trying and kept reading a bit further each time because once I was into the guts of the tale it did not let me go.
With plenty of lost girls of all ages and shades of "The Monkey's Paw", The Winter People is a story spanning generations of women - women who are haunted by loss, by memory, by regrets. As the story unravels we learn the stories of these women - distant in time - whose lives intersect in the kind of echo that reverberates across time - each echo changing the essential sound although that first sound remains. Mothers who lose their children, children who lose their mothers, families who lose their men. This world is cold and still and something wicked lurks in the woods that are the intersection of these stories.
The Winter People is atmospheric. It is haunted and tragic and beautiful. Sara and Gertie, Alice and Ruthie and Fawn, and maybe most of all Auntie are characters rich and full of life and of grief and of determination. I found myself reading compulsively - I couldn't wait to find out what would happen next. The story captured my imagination and left me with its own resounding set of questions: What would you do if you could bring someone back from the dead - would you? How would that turn out? Joy or pain or just plain cold longing? A great read I was sorry to finish.
FTC Disclosure: Advance copy from the publisher
Publishing Information: Doubleday - February 11, 2014
Format: Kindle
Rating: ★★★★
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