The Ghost Road. Charis Cotter. Toronto, ON: Tundra, Sept. 4, 2018. 351 pp., hardcover & EPUB, $19.99 (hc.). ISBN 978-1-101-91889-0 (hc.), ISBN 978-1-101-91890-6 (EPUB). Grades 4-7 / Ages 9-12. Review by Tara Stieglitz. **** /4 Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy.

excerpt:

I had to get out. I tried to calm the panic. All I had to do was find the door. I tried to focus on that one thought. Find the door.

I turned to feel my way back to the opening in the wall, and tripped over something on the floor. I bent down and groped around. My fingers closed on something hard, made of metal with a curved handle—the candleholder, without the candle. I picked it up so I wouldn’t trip over it again in the dark, and took tiny steps till I touched the wall. It was solid. No doorway.

I put the candleholder on the floor and felt along with both my hands till I hit another wall, at right angles to the first. I thought I must have missed the opening, so I went slowly back, each step tentative, but there was no opening. The dark pressed closer.

Then I hit another wall.

I stopped and took a deep, raggedy breath. There was no door. I couldn’t get out.

Ruth is initially reluctant to spend the summer in Newfoundland as she’d rather be travelling the world, collecting plants with her botanist father. Unfortunately for her, her father has recently remarried and is spending the summer honeymooning with Ruth’s new stepmother. Ruth’s mother died when she was young, and her father never talked much about her mother or her mother’s family, and so this summer is the first time Ruth has met her relatives. When Ruth arrives in Newfoundland and meets her Great Aunt Doll and her cousin Ruby, she is surprised to discover that she and Ruby are nearly exactly the same age and look almost identical.

     Ruth has been brought up to believe in science and reason, a perspective that clashes with Ruby’s firm believe in ghosts and fairies. Ruth’s convictions are challenged as she discovers that the scenic hills of Newfoundland and her great-aunt’s old house, with its hidden rooms and secret compartments, are fruitful ground for spiritual happenings. After Ruth experiences sightings that Ruby is convinced are ghosts, the two girls begin to investigate their family history and uncover a family curse that dates back to when their family was in Ireland, before their immigrating to Newfoundland. In every generation, there is a pair of girl twins born, and each pair of twins dies young and dies at the same time. They realise that their own mothers were the latest victims of this curse and that Ruth’s vivid nightmares and nighttime visions might hold the key to what happened in the past and may help them as they set out to end the curse.

     The Ghost Road is a delightful ghost story full of mystery and intrigue, with just the right amount of creepiness. Ruth and Ruby are adventurous and engaging characters, and the plot of the novel, while occasionally predicable, contains enough suspense to keep the reader going. The novel does a wonderful job of evoking Newfoundland as a setting, and it incorporates elements of that province’s real history of Irish settlement. The Ghost Road will be enjoyed by any fan of gothic mysteries and merits purchase by school and public libraries.

Highly Recommended.

Tara Stieglitz is a librarian at MacEwan University in Edmonton, AB.

To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.

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