I
confess that I have lived within a half-hour drive of Salem,
Massachusetts, for seven years and have never stopped to visit the
place. Friends' tales of hokey haunted houses, tourist trap
souvenir shops and costumed "witches" were enough for me to steer
clear of town. But this summer I may finally have found a reason to
visit Salem: local author Brunonia Barry's captivating portrait of
this historic harbor city.

As anyone who has studied early American history knows, of course,
Salem's history is a notorious one. It's no coincidence that Barry
sets her modern-day tale, with its convergence of mystical
practices and troubled family history, in this town, whose history
is similarly troubled and mystical.

Sophya "Towner" Whitney has come back home after spending the last
15 years in Southern California. Still healing from major surgery,
she returns to Salem when her great-aunt Eva mysteriously
disappears. Like Eva --- and virtually all the Whitney women ---
Towner has the ability to "read" other people, to see their
innermost thoughts. But this "gift" has also threatened to ruin
Towner's life on more than one occasion, as her hallucinations and
visions landed her in a psychiatric hospital, estranged her from
her family and ruined her romantic relationships.

As soon as Towner returns to Salem, she feels Eva's presence
strongly, so vividly that she's convinced Eva must be upstairs in
the sprawling old Victorian mansion. But when the police discover
Eva's body --- and when Eva's will reveals that she has left
everything to Eva --- Towner begins to wonder whether Eva, or Eva's
spirit, has brought her back to Salem for a reason.

Towner's reintroduction to her hometown is anything but easy. Her
mother, May, who lives on (fictional) Yellow Dog Island where she
shelters abused women and teaches them to make Ipswich lace, has
grown increasingly eccentric and reclusive. Her attempts at dating
a local cop who is investigating the disappearance of a pregnant
teenager are awkward at best. And her interactions with her abusive
uncle Cal, who has declared himself the leader of the so-called
Calvinists, a vehemently anti-witch religious sect, are just as
violent and threatening as they were in her youth. Worst of all,
being in Salem again casts Towner's mind back to her twin sister
Lyndley, whose death Towner never recovered from.

Brunonia Barry's debut novel is startlingly ambitious. Freely
switching perspectives, shifting forward and back in time, and
incorporating documents and evidence from Towner's past, the
narrative echoes the complexities of Towner's own mind --- and of
the intricate strands of the lace that has been at the center of so
many generations of Whitney women. Part mystery and part romance,
THE LACE READER is most of all an evocative portrait of a place,
and of a family, that readers will enjoy spending time with. I
suspect that other readers, like myself, will be so enchanted by
Barry's book that they, too, will visit Salem for something richer
than those tacky souvenir shops and haunted houses.