Margaret Buffie

The Haunting of Frances Rain is a story about troubled families. Our 15 1/2-year-old Canadian heroine, Elizabeth 'Lizzie' McGill, has always looked forward to spending summers with her beloved Gran, her mother's mother. The old cabin on the shores of Rain Lake has been her haven. Not this year -- instead of being put on a bus with her older brother, Evan, and her younger sister, Erica, their stepfather is driving the family to Gran's.

The McGill children suffer from having two self-centered parents, who are also both lawyers. Their father walked out two years ago. Three months ago, their mother married a bear of a man, a talented and successful potter with teeth the size of sugar cubes (Lizzie thinks of him as 'Toothy Tim'). I never had a stepparent, but I don't think my late mother was a good one to my older half-siblings. Tim is such a nice man I don't know what he sees in Connie. I wanted to drag her off to counseling for the appalling way she broke the news she was getting married again to her children (see chapter 2).

Carl McGill left not long before Erica started first grade, and she eats too much when there's tension in the family. She's chubby. Evan is obviously his mother's favorite. That's not just the way Lizzie sees it. Sure, Evan is brilliant -- he's skipped enough grades to be going to college already -- but he's an obnoxious jerk. Part of that is because their dad walked out. It doesn't help that he's four inches shorter than Lizzie, who already is only two inches shorter than their six-foot Gran. The only thing that unites these older siblings is being unpleasant to Tim. That's even though Lizzie has more of a life now that she no longer has to get dinner, do the housework, and mind Erica.

From my adult perspective, Tim is a godsend to his stepchildren: he cooks, cleans, and makes time for little Erica without giving up his pottery. Thanks to Carl and Connie, though, they might be losing Tim.

Lizzie decides to make uninhabited Rain Island her refuge from her family. There is where she finds the spectacles (glasses) that enable her to see the island's ghosts. One of them is the mysterious Frances Rain, a woman who died over sixty years ago. Lizzie is afraid to talk about her experiences, especially after the reaction Tim gets when he mentions what he saw to Lizzie, Evan, and local friend Alex Bird.

Lizzie becomes very interested in the lives of Frances and a girl who came to stay with her. They certainly get along much better than Lizzie's own family. It takes a couple of crises to get Lizzie focused on the present again. (When Lizzie finally uncovers the Rain Island secret, the ghost she's dubbed 'Toad Man' proves to have been much worse than even Carl or Connie! Society has changed enough that today's teens will have to infer from the text what made Toad Man so upset.)

It's a good ghost story, a good family story, and a nice mystery.… (mehr)

While Winter Shadows contains elements of stories that I normally adore (young lady protagonist, time travel, diaries, self-discovery) I just couldn't make myself love this book. I liked it fine enough, but it really took a lot of focus for me to pick up the book and keep reading after a few pages. Present-day Cass and 1800's Beatrice had similar life situations, family drama, etcetera, but the timing seemed to be a bit off to me. As an example, Cass would be reading Beatrice's diary entry, and instead of cutting to Beatrice's timeline directly after Cass's reading, it would either be a few days before or after the events we'd just read about. That's just confusing, and it happened all of the time. You can tell that Ms. Buffie certainly did her historical homework as the book is chock-full of Cree language and details, but it felt like an overload of information for me. It's certainly deserving of the awards it's won, but to call this an easy read would be a stretch. 2 stars.… (mehr)