Publisher's Synopsis
Janey Carter has returned home to her beloved town of Gowan, nestled among the mountains in the Spry River Valley of central Massachusetts. Tired of the quasi-aristocracy projected by her wealthy family, she hopes to acquire the position of teacher in the small, one room schoolhouse and show the town folks that she can be more than just the princess everybody believes her to be. It is the Carter's money, accumulated over a century, that kept the towns head above the rough water that is The Great Depression. But there was another kind of flood coming and no amount of money was going to stop it. Boston needed water and the Spry River Valley was a bullseye on the map. The townsfolk were awaiting the word, and preparing for the worst, but none of them could truly prepare for the darkness that was coming. Janey's adulterous father, Benjamin, had banished her and her mother from Carter House to make room for his new bride whom he'd secretly wed while abroad. When Benjamin and a few other town folk come up missing, along with a series of unnatural events and some grisly killings, fingers point to the unknown woman and her courtiers still occupying Carter House. A fierce determination begins to burn within Janey, prompting her to want to get to the bottom of the whole affair. But in the course of her investigation, her father's groundskeeper stumbles out of the woods dressed in a filthy nightshirt and dies on the office floor of the local attorney, his last words being, "Don't go up there..." Janey realizes that there might be something more sinister at play, and that her village has come under attack by supernatural forces far beyond her control.
