There are three Story sisters: Ev, 15; Meg, a year younger; and 12-year-old Claire. As children, they were bonded, living part of their days in an alternate reality, a world with demons, witches and magic. Ev is the inventor of these fantasies. She is precocious and creates a language for her mythical kingdom. Her devoted sisters learn the secret words so that they often communicate beyond their mother’s ability to understand them.

The girls are stunningly beautiful with light eyes and thick dark hair. The family is the loving kind, and we meet cousins, grandparents, and longtime friends who care about Annie, the divorced mother of these three remarkable girls.

There is a party for the grandparents’ wedding anniversary at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. After dinner, people are relaxed and preoccupied in conversation. The girls become restless, leave the party and cross the street to the waiting hansom cabs.

Ev declares that the horses are mistreated. Through sister telepathy, she signals Claire to rescue an animal from abuse. While Ev distracts the drivers, Claire jumps in, takes the reins and signals the horse to go. Very soon she loses control, barely managing to steer the animal into Central Park.

This scene is masterfully written: one’s heart starts racing along with the runaways. Traffic, police cars, pedestrians, enter the chase. It sounds like good film footage, but the outcome is grim. Troubling events continue. Ev goes on a self-destructive rampage. She instigates more crises until the family is broken into far-flung pieces.

The mayhem has a cause that is suggested early on, but not until the end is Ev’s behavior clearly understood.

The sadness in this story is that the mother, grandparents, and cousins could not intervene before the girls smash their once promising futures.

One wonders if certain acts can ever be forgiven. What are the limits of family loyalty? This is not a coming-of-age story that portrays experience familiar to most people. But it is a cautionary tale, meaning that adolescents who rebel beyond the norm have a reason for doing so, even when they themselves are not fully aware of it. A childhood secret long buried can become violently expressed in later life.

This is my first exposure to Alice Hoffman, who has written more than 20 novels and enjoyed too much literary success to catalog here. Her many fans will welcome a new arrival. But this book is dark, dark, dark.

jimandy111@cox.net