Earlier this summer, I went on a hiking trip to one of my favorite places: the Green Mountains of Vermont. Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t read Jennifer McMahon’s new novel, THE NIGHT SISTER, just before or during my trip. As with her previous fiction, McMahon manages to turn Vermont’s verdant, picturesque scenery into the backdrop for some truly unnerving plots.

In this case, McMahon centers her three narratives on the Tower Motel in rural Vermont. She chooses to revisit the bizarre motel, which (as the name suggests) includes an actual tower modeled on English castles, at three points in history: the late 1950s, the late 1980s and the present day. Her three narratives contain several overlapping characters, but most of what eventually brings the three strands together is their shared setting.

"The narratives gradually begin to converge, not only as readers eventually grasp the terrifying force behind the suspicious events, but as present-day events start to echo things that happened decades earlier. McMahon effectively maintains suspense throughout by using this technique and by keeping readers wondering about several plot points."

In 1955, the Tower Motel was still more or less thriving, although the rumor of a new interstate that would divert traffic away from the hotel soon begins to rumble. Rose and her older sister, Sylvie, the proprietor’s daughters, have grown up at the hotel, putting on shows for the tourists who pass through each evening. Sylvie dreams of escaping from Vermont and running away to Hollywood. But Rose, who is jealous of her sister’s beauty and likability, becomes convinced by her grandmother’s folk tales about mares, dangerous shape-shifters who turn into butterflies, birds or even monsters, often without ever being aware of their own power. Sylvie often disappears from the girls’ room at night and claims not to remember her wanderings the next morning. Might she be a mare?

In 1989, Rose’s daughter, Amy, is being raised by her grandmother. Rose, who has developed a drinking problem, is hardly on the scene, leaving Amy and her friends Piper and Margot to run around the now-shuttered motel, looking for clues as to what happened to Amy’s Aunt Sylvie, who disappeared in the early 1960s and was never heard from again. Did Sylvie follow her Hollywood dreams? Or is there a more ominous explanation for her disappearance?

In 2013, Piper (now living in California) is called back to Vermont, where her younger sister Margot is expecting a baby any day. The baby’s imminent arrival is not what prompts Piper’s hasty return, however --- it’s the murder of Amy’s entire family (with the exception of Amy’s daughter, who escaped) at the Tower Motel. All evidence seems to suggest that Amy herself is responsible for the horrific crime. But what would have prompted Amy to do such a thing? Piper hasn’t been close to Amy since that summer of 1989, but she’s determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, even if it puts her own life at risk.

The three narratives unfold simultaneously, as McMahon bounces readers from past to present and back again. The narratives gradually begin to converge, not only as readers eventually grasp the terrifying force behind the suspicious events, but as present-day events start to echo things that happened decades earlier. McMahon effectively maintains suspense throughout by using this technique and by keeping readers wondering about several plot points. Her skillful writing also offers readers plenty of thematic material to chew on, considering, for example, such issues as sibling rivalry, forgiveness, family legacies and unconditional love.