Sarah Arthur, author of numerous nonfiction titles including The Year of Small Things: Radical Faith for the Rest of Us and A Light so Lovely: The Spiritual Legacy of Madeleine L’Engle, offers young-adult readers her first novel, a tale of queens and faraway lands and mysterious happenings.
Eva Joyce, an American 14-year-old, unexpectedly spends the summer at the English manor house of her grandmother, a woman she’s never met. The fairy tales Eva loved as a child seem to be more than simply stories, Eva discovers, as she explores the house and grounds. Her frosty grandmother’s nighttime ramblings add even more mystery as Eva and her new friend Frankie try to unravel what’s going on. He seems to know more than he’s saying, and Grandmother certainly has more going on than meets the eye. It seems like everyone except Eva is in on some sort of secret, but it isn’t until Eva crosses the portal into another place and time that she begins to put the pieces together.
Arthur weaves a beautiful tale, what she calls “portal fantasy,” that brings together the past and present, two different worlds, queens and subjects, dreams and reality. Young adult readers will identify with Eva as she struggles to know herself and her family, and they’ll love the richly layered story that Arthur weaves perfectly to its satisfying conclusion.
As this writer of faith said in a recent interview, “My mission is nurturing the imagination, my vision, to echo Katherine Paterson, is to be ‘a spy for hope.’”
Arthur’s second in the series, Once a Castle, releases in 2025 and the third, Once a Crown, in 2026. (WaterBrook)
About the Author
Ann Byle is author of Chicken Scratch: Lessons on Living Creatively from a Flock of Hens. She is a freelance writer and author of several other books, magazine articles, and reviews. She lives in Grand Rapids, Mich.