This was one of the better ghost stories I've read in the last several months, after a pretty significant dry spell. It starts out kind of slow, but picks up about halfway through. It tells the parallel stories of Helen and her husband Nate, who leave their city lives behind to move to the country and build a traditional house themselves, and their next door neighbor, a teenage girl, Olive. It seems that Olive's mother has disappeared, and rumor has it that she has run off with a man, making her the talk of the town, but not everything is as it seems.
The land Helen and Nate are building their house on also has a reputation: it's said that a woman named Hattie who once lived there was a witch. The former owner seems just a little too eager to get rid of the property, a fair amount of which consists of a bog. It was said that when Hattie and her daughter Jane were blamed after the local school burned down in the 1920s, killing several of the town's children, Hattie was murdered by angry townspeople. Her daughter Jane escaped, but disappeared, never to be seen again. It is also widely whispered that Hattie, the descendant of a wealthy merchant, has hidden the family fortune somewhere on the property.
Helen, a former teacher, endeavors to find out as much as she can about the property and its former inhabitants, but soon discovers that both the land and the former residents harbor some dark secrets. Olive becomes friends with the new owners, despite a somewhat rocky start, and assists them in building their new house.
She's also invested in finding Hattie's treasure, something her mother was also involved in. Things really start getting interesting when Helen begins to encounter some artifacts closely associated with the property and Hattie's descendants, as they seemingly summon the restless spirits of the unfortunate family's women, all of whom have met with a tragic end.
There are many twists and turns, and the plot moves at a decent pace. The ending is somewhat unexpected, if somewhat tragic. Definitely recommended, much more so than the last several modern novels I've read.
