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From a usually deft storyteller (Five Fortunes, 1998, etc.), an uncompelling ghost tale, set in Maine and spanning two

centuries, that fails to either beguile or bewitch. The narrator, Hannah Gray, is getting old and wants to tell what happened before it's too late, so back in Dundee, Maine, where she spent summers, she begins her account of a malevolent spirit and thwarted love. It's winter in the small seaside village—the perfect time to describe a restless ghost bent on harming those with joyful lives. The story Hannah relates, of her encounter with the ghost, parallels the story of Claris Osgood, born in 1838 and destined for tragedy. Hannah explains how her mother, a Dundee native, died when Hannah was a baby and her father married Edith, a dejected, insecure woman. The summer Hannah was 17, the family rented the old schoolhouse in Dundee, but Hannah soon realized there was something strange about the house. She heard weeping and doors being opened, and then saw a woman in her bedroom. Curious and determined to disprove a skeptical Edith, Hannah learned the house was moved from nearby Beal Island, where a notorious murder took place in1886. In the other story, Claris grows up, marries loner Daniel Haskell, and moves to his home on Beal Island. Missing her family, Claris is consoled by her son, Amos. Later daughter Sallie is born, yet she will never be loved as much, and when Amos drowns, Claris begins behaving strangely. Next, Daniel is murdered, and Sallie is accused of the crime but acquitted. Hannah continues with her own yarn, recalling how she met and fell forever in love with Conary Crocker, a fisherman's son, and how the embittered ghost deliberately destroyed her happiness.

Schematic plot, unconvincing characters: both undo what a potentially haunting love story.