THE TRUTH ABOUT STONE HOLLOW

In Taylor Springs, California in 1938, Amy is not about to question either her mother's and aunt's narrowly religious view of life nor the general belief that Stone Hollow, site of an abandoned shack and death place of an Italian father and daughter and later a pair of bootleggers, is haunted. But just as she is drawn to the forbidden storeroom full of family mementos Amy is fascinated by Stone Hollow, and when a strange new boy arrives in town and she covertly takes his part against the class bully, the two children make some secret Sunday afternoon visits to the spot. There Jason discovers a sacred Indian stone which brings him in contact with other loops in time and allows him to "see" events in the lives of the shack's now dead inhabitants, and later at home in the storeroom Amy, with a piece of the stone, "sees" a domestic moment in her aunt's and mother's childhood — and unexpected menace in the ghost eyes of their preacher father. The story ends conventionally with Amy musing on what she has learned from the experience — the past is a lot closer than most people think, and truth is something you have to find for yourself — and this has none of the pace, ambiguity or psychological dimensions of Snyder's recent works. But second rate Synder is still more rewarding than most ghost stories, Amy's dreary everyday world makes the supernatural elements all the more convincing, and Jason's almost offhand comments about time make them easier to accept than a number of more pretentiously elaborate systems.