Mystery of the Witches’ Bridge, by Barbee Oliver Carleton
I recently got to meet Layla (Sholio), which was just as awesome as I’d imagined. While we were on a long drive, we somehow managed to figure out that we’d loved the same book as kids, which was some kind of miracle as I couldn’t remember the title or most identifying details, she had gotten it with a missing first chapter, and it has editions with different titles and extremely different covers. However, we somehow did identify it, probably by the extremely memorable setting, Layla remembered the title, and I ordered it off Amazon and re-read it for the first time since I was about ten.
Unlike some childhood favorites, it was just as good as I recalled. What I’d mostly been drawn in by was the atmosphere and setting, and that was just as vivid and unique, reading it as an adult, as it had seemed when I was nine. What I had not remembered, but was impressed by as an adult, was the neat plotting, thematic coherence, and the fact that it’s a classic Gothic - a genre I did not identify as a thing until I was much older, and which does not generally star twelve-year-old boys.
Twelve-year-old orphan Dan Pride comes to live with his uncle in York, MA, 37 miles from Boston. It’s a land of salt marshes, constant wind, bridges over rivers, marsh fowl, tiny islands, and deathtrap black ponds created when the salt hay is left to rot. This unique landscape, which has got to be real - it 100% reads like it was written by someone who lived there - is one I’ve never again encountered in fiction, or nonfiction for that matter. It’s eerie and beautiful. You can smell the salt and hear the whistling wind.
Dan arrives with little more than a few clothes and his violin, and meets his forbidding uncle, a friendly hired man and housekeeper, and an alarming dog named Caliban. He’s told the creepy, tragic history of the area, centering around a death, a curse, a missing briefcase, accusations of witchcraft, and a feud between two families, the Prides and the Bishops, which continues to this day. That night he sits alone in his room, listening to the wailing wind and looking out the window into the darkness of the salt marshes, he sees flashes of light in Morse code, which he knows from camp. They spell out DAN PRIDE…
To say more about the plot would give too much away; some plot twists are probably more surprising if you’re ten, but it’s all very well-crafted, with neatly orchestrated set-ups and satisfying payoffs. But mostly this is memorable for the atmosphere, which stuck with me for thirty-five years. Re-reading it, I can see why.
Reading it this go-round, I was convinced for ages that Pip was a girl and this was secret for some reason, even when Pip takes off his shirt in public and no one bats an eye. "Maybe they haven't yet hit puberty," I thought. Spoiler: Pip is not a girl. By the time I found out that Pip is not a girl and his full name is Philip, I had vague recollections that I had been under the same misapprehension the first time I read it too. I think this was due to a couple factors: the book has multiple "things are not as they seem" reveals, Pip and his sister look identical (so Dan mistakes Gilly for his friend Pip when he first sees her) and actual identical twins are the same gender, and, probably most importantly, it is a plot point in an Agatha Christie book that Pip is a unisex nickname which can be short for either Philip or Phillippa.
Mystery of the witches' bridge
She has another book, The Secret of Saturday Cove
, which also sounds atmospheric though more bright and cheery, and is available on Kindle for 99 cents. I snapped it up.
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2202813.html. Comment here or there.
Unlike some childhood favorites, it was just as good as I recalled. What I’d mostly been drawn in by was the atmosphere and setting, and that was just as vivid and unique, reading it as an adult, as it had seemed when I was nine. What I had not remembered, but was impressed by as an adult, was the neat plotting, thematic coherence, and the fact that it’s a classic Gothic - a genre I did not identify as a thing until I was much older, and which does not generally star twelve-year-old boys.
Twelve-year-old orphan Dan Pride comes to live with his uncle in York, MA, 37 miles from Boston. It’s a land of salt marshes, constant wind, bridges over rivers, marsh fowl, tiny islands, and deathtrap black ponds created when the salt hay is left to rot. This unique landscape, which has got to be real - it 100% reads like it was written by someone who lived there - is one I’ve never again encountered in fiction, or nonfiction for that matter. It’s eerie and beautiful. You can smell the salt and hear the whistling wind.
Dan arrives with little more than a few clothes and his violin, and meets his forbidding uncle, a friendly hired man and housekeeper, and an alarming dog named Caliban. He’s told the creepy, tragic history of the area, centering around a death, a curse, a missing briefcase, accusations of witchcraft, and a feud between two families, the Prides and the Bishops, which continues to this day. That night he sits alone in his room, listening to the wailing wind and looking out the window into the darkness of the salt marshes, he sees flashes of light in Morse code, which he knows from camp. They spell out DAN PRIDE…
To say more about the plot would give too much away; some plot twists are probably more surprising if you’re ten, but it’s all very well-crafted, with neatly orchestrated set-ups and satisfying payoffs. But mostly this is memorable for the atmosphere, which stuck with me for thirty-five years. Re-reading it, I can see why.
Reading it this go-round, I was convinced for ages that Pip was a girl and this was secret for some reason, even when Pip takes off his shirt in public and no one bats an eye. "Maybe they haven't yet hit puberty," I thought. Spoiler: Pip is not a girl. By the time I found out that Pip is not a girl and his full name is Philip, I had vague recollections that I had been under the same misapprehension the first time I read it too. I think this was due to a couple factors: the book has multiple "things are not as they seem" reveals, Pip and his sister look identical (so Dan mistakes Gilly for his friend Pip when he first sees her) and actual identical twins are the same gender, and, probably most importantly, it is a plot point in an Agatha Christie book that Pip is a unisex nickname which can be short for either Philip or Phillippa.
Mystery of the witches' bridge
She has another book, The Secret of Saturday Cove
, which also sounds atmospheric though more bright and cheery, and is available on Kindle for 99 cents. I snapped it up.
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2202813.html. Comment here or there.