In the Shadow of Blackbirds

Starred review from February 11, 2013
Sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black lives up to her striking name—she’s a curious girl fascinated by science, living in 1918, “a year the devil designed,” as Mary puts it. With WWI raging on and Mary’s father on trial for treason, she goes to live with her Aunt Eva in San Diego, Calif., even as influenza sweeps across America, devastating the population and rendering those left behind paranoid and weary. Grieving for her childhood beau Stephen, who died while fighting overseas with the Army, Mary goes outside during a thunderstorm and is struck dead by lightning—for a few minutes. When Mary comes to, she discovers she can communicate with the dead, including Stephen. Winters’s masterful debut novel is an impressively researched marriage of the tragedies of wartime, the 1918 flu epidemic, the contemporaneous Spiritualism craze, and a chilling love story and mystery. Unsettling b&w period photographs appear throughout, à la Ransom Riggs’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, greatly adding to the novel’s deliciously creepy atmosphere. Ages 12–up. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Agency.

February 1, 2014

Gr 8 Up-Mary Shelley Black's very name sets an eerie tone, bringing to mind menacing monsters and the power of lightning. Mary Shelley, a 16-year-old with a knack for tinkering, has come to live with her Aunt Eva during the flu epidemic of 1918. She had previously fallen for Stephen, a talented photographer, but they were caught in a compromising situation by Julius, who purports to capture spirit images in photographs. Interest in seances and the afterlife runs high as war and disease have taken many loved ones too soon. Julius is making a fine living, and Stephen has been reported killed at the front. Winters's debut (Amulet, 2013) is full of descriptions of smells-many of them rancid or tinged by the onions and garlic worn and eaten to ward off the flu. Mary Shelley tastes bitter grief, hot metal rage, and "carrots that taste like rocks" as she seeks to separate reality from imagination when she senses Stephen's spirit nearby. He tells her he is beset by blackbirds that tear at the flesh of the boys at the front. Along with the air of the supernatural, deliberate hoaxes enter into the story. The satisfying conclusion resolves an earthly mystery and sets a troubled spirit to rest. Angela Goethals narrates in a low, slightly husky tone, well suited to this ghostly story. Her voice wraps itself around the rich imagery, and will alternately lull listeners and send chills up the spines of those seeking historically grounded Gothic romance. The print book contains period photographs not available with the audiobook.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX

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