The Fate of Mercy Alban

December 3, 2012
Fans of Webb’s well-received debut, The Tale of Halcyon Crane, may feel let down by her similar-in-outline sophomore effort, about a legendary curse that haunts the powerful Alban family’s mansion by Lake Superior. When divorced mother Grace Alban returns to the mansion after her mother’s death, she finds letters revealing her mother’s affair with famous writer David Coleville, who committed suicide during the same 1956 solstice party from which Grace’s aunt, Fate Alban, disappeared. While searching for a lost Coleville novel she believes will clarify the past, Grace is imperiled by the mansion’s malevolent presences, an obsessed journalist and an emotionally disturbed woman who may be Fate. Hidden passageways, magical spell books, resurrections from the dead, sudden disappearances, secret births: amid a welter of gothic staples, the central ghost story concerning Fate and her mysterious twin, Mercy, gets lost. Grace, her love interest, and the privileged world she revisits are pleasant but generic, as is the rediscovered manuscript described as literary genius. Agent: Jennifer Weltz, Jean V. Naggar Literary.

November 1, 2012
In 1956, a summer solstice party at the Alban family's elegant manor ends abruptly with the suicide of a renowned writer and the disappearance of Mercy Alban. The family closes ranks, and the secrets of that night lie hidden. In the decline of old age, Adele Alban has decided to break the silence and reveal what she remembers about that night to a journalist. Before she can do so, however, she also disappears, only to be found in the garden, dead. Her daughter Grace Alban had left the ancestral home on the shores of Lake Superior 20 years ago, escaping the waters that had murderously claimed the lives of her brothers and the guilt surrounding her father's suicide in those same waters. Recently divorced and with her teenage daughter, Amity, in tow, Grace is quickly engaged by funeral arrangements, a task made less mournful by the attractive Reverend Matthew Parker. Soon, Grace discovers a cache of old love letters. Written to Adele, the letters not only reveal a secret love affair, but also tell of a lost novel about life at Alban House the summer before the tragic party. More sinisterly, the letters suggest that the very wood constructing Alban House is bespelled and the family witched. And when a frightening and possibly mad woman crashes the funeral, accompanied by the reporter Adele had intended to meet, the curse of the Alban family can no longer be ignored. Webb (The Tale of Halcyon Crane, 2010) plots a tale rife with dark family secrets, hidden passageways, love, intrigue and witchcraft. Yet, the telling of the tale falls flat. Supernatural entities do invade the Albans' lives, but the tale lacks a sustained gothic atmosphere of evil forces gathering and conspiring. Less haunted house than detective story.

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December 1, 2012
Webb (The Tale of Halcyon Crane, 2010) has cooked up another confection filled with family secrets coming to light in the Midwest. After her mother, Adele, dies suddenly, Grace Alban returns to the Minnesota mansion she grew up in, with her teenage daughter, Amity, in tow. While going through her mother's possessions, Grace is shocked to discover love letters written to Adele by a writer named David Coleville, Grace's father's best friend, who killed himself back in the 1950s, on the same night Grace's aunt Fate disappeared. When Grace and Matthew Parker, the handsome minister who presided over her mother's funeral, discover Coleville's unpublished novel, they find it to be a thinly veiled account of his time spent at Alban House, his burgeoning love affair with Adele, and a mysterious lady in white haunting the grounds. Grace is further shocked when an ambitious reporter shows up at Adele's funeral with Aunt Fate, who is very much alive but not entirely sane, and who may be a threat to Grace and her daughter. Magic and mystery intertwine in Webb's engaging midwestern gothic.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)