SIREN'S STORM

A dreamy, hair-raising mystery in a Long Island fishing village–cum–upscale resort evokes the traditional horrors of coastal communities.

Seventeen-year-old Will is a local in Walfang; Gretchen is "summer people," but she's Will's best friend anyway. They used to be three musketeers, along with Will's brother Tim, until a year ago when Tim died in a boating accident that should have killed both boys. Now Will and Gretchen try to renew their friendship in one of the creepiest summers either can remember. Will is drawn to Asia, a beautiful stranger with "green sea glass eyes." Gretchen worries about the local mad teenager who babbles portents about “seekriegers” and sings sea shanties. A 400-year-old gold doubloon turns up in a donation box, and an antique bone recorder—the spitting image of one found on Tim's body—appears in the local antique shop. Most frightening of all, Gretchen's sleepwalking, always worrying, has gotten downright dangerous. The more Will investigates, the more he sees connections with generations-old local mysteries—and possibly, incomprehensibly, stories far older than that. Walfang is exquisitely realized (occasionally too much so; narrative flow sometimes takes a backseat to painting Walfang with not-always-necessary detail); characters are defined as much by their place in society as by their behavior.