2019 Book Review #4: Arcadia Falls

Wow.  This book!

The author is new to me and she lives somewhere in our state of New York. I'm guessing based on her knowledge of the Catskills (mountains to the south of us) that she lives somewhere down there.

Because I enjoyed this book so much, I plan on looking for her other novels at our library.

STORY SUMMARY

Meg Rosenthal is a widow.  Her husband died unexpectedly leaving her with their 16 year old daughter, Sally.  He also left them in a lot of debt so Meg is forced to sell their upper middle class home in Great Neck on Long Island and move somewhere less expensive.  She just took a teaching job (teaching folklore) at an upstate NY private boarding school known as Arcadia.  It's located in the tiny hamlet of Arcadia Falls in the Catskills.  They are hoping to make a fresh start in this very rural setting.  It's quite different from the affluent life style Sally has been a part of.

Sally is always plugged into her iPod or cell phone since her dad's death, and Meg is hoping this move will reconnect them and draw them closer.  As they drive through the wooded setting to their new cottage on the school property, the woods reminds Meg of the fairy tale she used to tell Sally at bedtime. It begins "there once was a girl who liked to pretend she was lost...." and it centers around a story that one of the boarding school's founders wrote "The Changeling Girl".  That writer was Lily Eberhardt who was found dead at the bottom of a ravine on the school's property.  Her partner and best friend Vera Beecher was crushed when this happened.  The current dean, Ivy St Clare, was just a teenager herself when Lily and Vera ran the school.

There's something strange about Meg's new boss however.  Ivy St Clare (Dean St Clare as she prefers to be called) is formidable and stern.  She seems to be watching the students and other teachers constantly.  She is very strict about the rites and rituals of the boarding school.

During the First Night bonfire, an annual tradition at the start of the school year, Isabel Cheney, one of Meg's new folklore students, plunges to her death. The local sheriff, Callum Reade, who really likes Meg, finds Isabel's death to be very suspicious.  He also, though, is a man with a dark past and many secrets.  Meg is a bit freaked out by Callum's interest in the death of Isabel (didn't she just  get to close to the ravine's edge and fall...similar to Lily all those years ago?), but as long-buried secrets begin to be exposed regarding the school, the founders and the current dean, Meg gets wrapped up in solving the mystery as well.

Meg learns that she must face her own demons and she must face and deal with the danger that is threatening her own daughter!

"as the past clings tight to the present, the shadows, as if in a terrifying fairy tale, grow longer and deadlier." (from the front jacket of the book).

MY THOUGHTS

This book is so well thought out and written.  It really does contain a bit of a fairy tale to it.  In fact, when Meg's character finds the journal that Lily used to keep, she reads it and some of the chapters in the book are actually from the journal.  You have to pay close attention to what is being said and in what era you are in.  Once I got the hang of it, it was great.  

The present is told in the first tense....mostly from Meg's perspective.

The past is told via Lily's journal.  It's so well done.

There are many characters in this book but several of them are related to the teachers and artists from when the school was an Art Colony.  Pay close attention to the adult characters.  There are also several teen characters and they all became dear to my heart.  This book just draws you in.  

The setting description is very similar to some tiny towns in the Catskills where I've hiked or toured, so that made it fun as well.

Some of the themes that come out in this novel are based around passion, love, romance, art, revenge, and betrayal.  The mother-daughter relationship is an underlying theme as well.  As are the choices a woman, particularly a mother, must face between career/art and motherhood.

There was one quote that jumped out at me:

"I think of how it hurts to find that the person you loved wasn't who you thought they were and how that grief---the loss of the person you thought you loved---can be worse than death." (pg 344, Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman c. 2010)

In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 14 and older.

On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 10.