Sparrow Hill Road

Starred review from March 17, 2014
McGuire (the InCryptid series) brings empathy, complexity, and a shivering excitement to this well-developed campfire tale. Many stories have been told about a hitchhiker, a young woman—sometimes dressed in a prom dress or jeans and a T-shirt—who roams the highways in search of a ride. Rose Marshall is that hitcher, also known as the Ghost of Sparrow Hill Road. Rose has two purposes: one is helping the newly dead make the transition between states, and the other is hunting down Bobby Cross, the man who killed her in order to gain immortality. This is the story of her death, and her life. This mesmerizing tale had its beginnings in the short story “The Edge of Propinquity”; McGuire has smoothly turned it into a powerful blend of ghost story, love story, and murder mystery, wrapped in a perfectly neat package. Agent: Diana Fox, Fox Literary.

May 15, 2014

Rose is a ghost and a rather famous one at that. You may know her as the Phantom Prom Date, or the Girl in the Green Dress, but before she was an urban legend, Rose was a real 16-year-old girl. She's been that age a long time, always hitchhiking the American roads while hoping for a ride and the loan of a coat to make her real for a while. She encounters witches and fellow ghosts who help her; ghost hunters and vengeful spirits who oppose her; and lonely travelers who remind her of what it was like to be alive. The man who killed her and doomed her to the life of a ghost is still out there, and Rose eventually decides it is time to get her revenge. VERDICT This is the first in what we hope will be a long series about those who walk the ghost roads from the marvelous McGuire (Chimes at Midnight; Half-Off Ragnorak), who writes like a dream and creates wonderful, complex, sympathetic characters like Rose and then places them in peril.

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