This middle grade, magical-realism novel from the author of The
Flourishing of Floralie Laurel is about an Irish girl who is sent to a
mysterious town in Virginia to live with her long-lost mother, and is
Alice Hoffman's Nightbird meets Claire Legrand's The Cavendish Home
for Boys and Girls!
Amidst the 1971 Troubles between the Irish Republican Army and Northern
Ireland, twelve-year-old Finn lives in a world of her own of fairy
tales. Raised by her grandmother, Nuala, who is the village storyteller,
Finn spends her days playing make-believe in the forest, weaving tall
tales to tell her friend Darcy, longing to go to the island of Inis Eala
to meet the swans there, and waiting for her father to return from the
war. She's long since stopped believing in happy endings and miracles,
preferring to believe instead in serendipity, or "happy mistakes." While
Nuala revels in the safety and routine of their quiet village life,
spunky Finn craves adventure . . . something that comes to her more
quickly than expected.
When Darcy becomes lost at sea and Nuala suddenly passes away, Finn is
shipped off to the affluent town of Starlight Valley, Virginia, to live
with her long-lost mother, Aoife, and half-sister, Posy-Kate. Finn is
initially excited to get to know her newfound family, but she can't help
but notice that things are a bit unusual. The town is encircled by thorn
trees, and even stranger is Aoife's house, where the walls are covered
with swan feathers and decorated with swan heads--and Aoife's shoes
appear to be made out of swan bills.
Finn tries to ignore the sinking feeling that something isn't right, but
she starts to believe that what's happening isn't random. Instead, it's
taken directly from one of her grandmother's famous folktales, The
Children of Lir, where a scorned mother turns all of her children into
swans. But Finn stopped believing in those stories a long time ago . . .
could they actually be true?
