There Is a Door in This Darkness
by Kristin Cashore
High School    Dutton    376 pp.
6/24    9780803739994    $19.99
e-book ed.  9781101614181    $10.99

Wilhelmina’s beloved aunt Frankie died in 2018. Now it’s 2020, and Wilhelmina’s family and two closest friends still seem cut off from her in her grief; the isolating precautions of the pandemic and the chaotic state of the nation only make things worse. But on October 30, 2020, something changes, and Wilhelmina begins to see sights that can only be magical: an “owl lady,” a cryptic golden message, a glow surrounding certain people. Against her will, Wilhelmina must confront the impossible—but what if accepting the impossible also means accepting her aunt’s death? Set during a tense nine-day period surrounding the previous U.S. presidential election and flashing back to summer visits with Wilhelmina’s aunts (a loving, eccentric “throuple”), Cashore’s novel is rich with a quality of observation and multifarious detail that suits adolescent angst, loss, and the limited stimulation of pandemic “bubbles.” Tarot cards; smiles (teasing, ironic, or secretive); bathrobes; doughnuts (lots of good ones); hair; clothing; thoracic outlet syndrome (the afterword offers some startling news about that); birds; two warm, supportive constellations of trios (the aunts; Wilhelmina and her friends); and much more make their way into Wilhelmina’s thoughts and feelings as she finally emerges “into her own.” Although set in the recent past, this is a work of historical and magical realism with unsettling contemporary resonances.

From the July/August 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.