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A chilling ghost story with a twist: the New York Times bestselling author of The Winter People returns to the woods of Vermont to tell the story of a husband and wife who don't simply move into a haunted house, they start building one from scratch, without knowing it, until it's too late ...
In a quest for a simpler life, Helen and Nate abandon the comforts of suburbia and their teaching jobs to take up residence on forty-four acres of rural land where they will begin the ultimate, aspirational do-it-yourself project: building the house of their dreams. When they discover that this charming property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by the legend of Hattie Breckenridge, a woman who lived and died there a century ago. As Helen starts carefully sourcing decorative building materials for her home-wooden beams, mantles, historic bricks-she starts to unearth, and literally conjure, the tragic lives of Hattie's descendants, three generations of "Breckenridge women," each of whom died amidst suspicion, and who seem to still be seeking something precious and elusive in the present day.
May 19, 1924
It had started when Hattie was a little girl.
She'd had a cloth-bodied doll with a porcelain head called Miss Fentwig. Miss Fentwig told her things-things that Hattie had no way of knowing, things that Hattie didn't really want to hear. She felt it deep down inside her in the way that she'd felt things all her life.
Her gift.
Her curse.
One day, Miss Fentwig told her that Hattie's father would be killed, struck by lightning, and that there was nothing Hattie could do. Hattie tried to warn her daddy and her mother. She told them just what Miss Fentwig had said. "Nonsense, child," they said, and sent her to bed without supper for saying such terrible things.
Two weeks later, her daddy was dead. Struck by lightning while he was putting his horse in the barn.
In a quest for a simpler life, Helen and Nate abandon the comforts of suburbia and their teaching jobs to take up residence on forty-four acres of rural land where they will begin the ultimate, aspirational do-it-yourself project: building the house of their dreams. When they discover that this charming property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by the legend of Hattie Breckenridge, a woman who lived and died there a century ago. As Helen starts carefully sourcing decorative building materials for her home-wooden beams, mantles, historic bricks-she starts to unearth, and literally conjure, the tragic lives of Hattie's descendants, three generations of "Breckenridge women," each of whom died amidst suspicion, and who seem to still be seeking something precious and elusive in the present day.
May 19, 1924
It had started when Hattie was a little girl.
She'd had a cloth-bodied doll with a porcelain head called Miss Fentwig. Miss Fentwig told her things-things that Hattie had no way of knowing, things that Hattie didn't really want to hear. She felt it deep down inside her in the way that she'd felt things all her life.
Her gift.
Her curse.
One day, Miss Fentwig told her that Hattie's father would be killed, struck by lightning, and that there was nothing Hattie could do. Hattie tried to warn her daddy and her mother. She told them just what Miss Fentwig had said. "Nonsense, child," they said, and sent her to bed without supper for saying such terrible things.
Two weeks later, her daddy was dead. Struck by lightning while he was putting his horse in the barn.