When Meg Rosenthal’s husband dies unexpectedly from a heart attack, she is left not only emotionally devastated, but financially ruined. Her easy life on Long Island suddenly is over for her and her teenage daughter, Sally, and it isn’t until she is offered a teaching job in Arcadia Falls that life begins to feel normal again. Arcadia School is tucked away in rural upstate New York and has a mysterious past, especially since it was started by a lesbian couple, Lily Eberhardt and Vera Beecher, who were famous painters and fairy tale authors before their love took a tragic turn and Lily fell off a cliff on school property. Within a few days of the new school year, a student falls off of the same cliff during a pagan festival, and soon hidden secrets, ghost sightings, and more deaths occur.
Goodman’s seventh novel again takes her back to what she writes best – wonderfully atmospheric, gothic novels that have some mystery woven into them. Her setting on the creepy, isolated school campus, especially when a snow storm paralyzes the area at the end, adds to the growing tension of the story. The role of fairy tales in our culture adds an interesting side story that ends up becoming more central to the book as it moves on, all with great results.
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