Coriander is nine when her story begins (15 when it closes), living by London Bridge on the Thames during Cromwell’s time. She writes by the light of seven candles, one for each section, and in her gentle voice tells of the sudden death of her mother, whose silver shadow is kept in a box, and her father’s quick remarriage to a piggy Puritan named Maud, as vicious to Coriander as she is to her own daughter, Hester. Coriander’s father vanishes, sought by the Roundheads, and Maud and a crooked man stuff Coriander into the box where her mother’s shadow was kept. In the silver world she falls into, Coriander finds that three years pass, and she glimpses the power of that shadow and the sight of her own true love. She returns, however, to find her father, restore her house, see the Restoration of Charles II and her love from the silvered land. Deft and dulcet language, a cast of supporters not the least of whom is Coriander’s loving stepsister Hester, and the tie to a grim historical season will hold readers fast. (historical background) (Historical fiction/fantasy. 10-14)
