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Searching... Central | Teen/Young Adult | Open Stacks Fiction | Open Stacks Teen Book | DUNCA | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Role-playing takes on a terrifying cast when 17-year-old Sarah, who is posing as a fortune-teller for a school fair, begins to see actual visions that can predict the future. Frightened, the other students brand her a witch, setting off a chain of events that mirror the centuries-old Salem witch trials in more ways than one.
Author Notes
Lois Duncan was born on April 28, 1934 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the age of 13, her first story was published in the magazine Calling All Girls. As a senior in high school, she won Seventeen magazine's annual short-story contest. She continued to write for magazines after getting married and having children. She entered her young adult manuscript Debutante Hill in Dodd, Mead and Company's Seventeenth Summer Literary Contest and earned the grand prize, which was $1000 and a book contract. That first title was published in 1958. She published several young adult novels at that time including Love Song for Joyce and A Promise for Joyce, both under the pseudonym Lois Kerry.
After her first marriage ended in divorce, she wrote freelance magazine articles and taught in the journalism department at the University of New Mexico. After she married for the second time, she started writing books again. Her young adult novels included Ransom, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Killing Mr. Griffin, Night Terrors, Stranger with My Face, Don't Look Behind You, and The Twisted Window.
She also wrote works for younger readers including Silly Mother, The Circus Comes Home: When the Greatest Show on Earth Rose the Rails, Hotel for Dogs, News for Dogs, and Movie for Dogs. Her best-known non-fiction book, Who Killed My Daughter?: The True Story of a Mother's Search for Her Daughter's Murderer, is about her family's experiences following the murder of her youngest daughter in 1989. Her works have earned her several awards including three Parents' Choice awards, the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1992, and the 2015 Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America. She died on June 15, 2016 at the age of 82.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Duncan (Stranger with My Face) delights in building suspense brick by brick until she has a whole creepy wall to collapse at the climax. This time, her mortar is an eerie crystal paperweight, the Salem witchcraft trials, hints of reincarnation and the unsteady alliances of step families. Sarah and her mother, Rosemary, have moved to a small, conservative town in the Ozarks because Rosemary has fallen in love with the hypocritical, still-married Ted. Sarah tries to fit in at the high school, but she has no friendsuntil the too-perfect Eric asks Sarah to be a fortune-teller at the Halloween carnival. Speed ahead in the predictable plot, and Sarah finds that she really can read future disaster in the crystal ball. Soon, frightened classmates proclaim her a witch, put a dead crow in her locker and lure her to a remote gallows to meet her fate amid a crowd of unbalanced teens and a blazing bonfire. While the characters are far too patthe jolly fat boy, cruel cheerleaders, evil handsome class president, shrill ex-wife, bossy stepfatherDuncan nevertheless propels the reader along, dropping sinister clues on every page like bread crumbs in a forest. As in many YA suspense novels, the adults are unsympathetic and clueless, allowing their teens to run rampant into the alluring arms of evil. The real nightmare of being a teenager is having nobody believe you or help you conquer your demons, but in this book, Sarah manages through self-reliance to face her fears, both natural and supernatural. Ages 12-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
New student Sarah is coerced into giving psychic readings for her classmates but draws ire when her predictions come true and reveal the hypocrisy of Pine Crest's best families. Accused of being a witch, Sarah realizes she and her classmates are reliving past lives as players in the Salem witch trials. The plot isn't as seamless as Duncan's best. Bib. From HORN BOOK 1997, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Gr. 6^-9. Sarah Zoltanne is new in town, dragged from California to Missouri by her mom, who is in love with a local teacher. Sarah is miserable, but after she plays a fortune-teller at a school event, popular Eric Garret enlists her to make fortune-telling a side business. When the fortunes start coming true, and Sarah begins having dreams about the Salem Witch Trials, reality becomes frightening and dangerous. This is a mish-mash that works best when it focuses on the effect Sarah's fortune-telling has on a parochial town, but the plot spins out of control when Sarah and the other kids turn out to be reincarnations of people from the witch trials. Despite the flaws (including a narrow portrait of "Christians" and the inaccurate information that most early Christians believed in reincarnation), the book has one important thing going for it--Duncan writes page-turners. Her well-known knack for mixing the sinister and the supernatural compensates for a lot--and it needs to here. --Ilene Cooper
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7-9Sarah, 17, has just moved from California to a small Missouri town so that her mother can be near her new boyfriend. The teen reluctantly agrees when handsome, popular Eric asks her to run a fortune-telling booth at the school's Halloween carnival. After her impressive performance, he convinces her to continue telling fortunes off campus. Then Sarah becomes unnerved by the startling visions about other students that she sees in the antique paperweight/crystal ball and begins to have terrifying nightmares. Her classmates, not knowing how to deal with Sarah's unsettling information, label her a witch. Her only friend is another misfit, Charlie. Because both of them are having dreams about the Salem witchcraft trials, Charlie develops a theory that they are living out the results of what happened in past lives in Salem; that many of Sarah's classmates may be former victims of her false accusations seeking revenge. Parts of the plot stretch credibility. That so many students could so easily become convinced that Sarah is a witch seems highly unlikely. Equally hard to accept is the idea that Sarah's mother has been drawn to the town so that Sarah can fulfill some sort of karmic destiny. Charlie's belief in reincarnation causes him to sound like a textbook on Eastern religions. Adult characters merely serve to move the story along. Sarah, however, is an insightful and perceptive character, and readers will identify with her anguish as she tries to deal with the cruelties inflicted on her. Unfortunately, the ending is abrupt and loose ends get tucked in too easily. Despite its weaknesses, this is still an exciting, suspenseful tale that will certainly be welcomed by Duncan's many fans.Bruce Anne Shook, Mendenhall Middle School, Greensboro, NC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A sloppy suspense novel--Duncan (Night Terrors, 1996, etc.) unsuccessfully charts a plot full of witchcraft, ESP, reincarnation, book-burning, and fortune-telling, as well as an utterly incredible chain of events. When Sarah's mother inexplicably falls in love with Ted, a tyrant, she gives up her job and home so they can move to his small town. Since he is separated from his wife, Sarah's mother is the ``other woman'' in a Peyton Placestyle community where it is nearly impossible for Sarah to make friends. When she poses as a fortune-teller at a school carnival, Sarah actually sees the future in her crystal ball, an ability that results in the widespread suspicion that she is a witch. With a heavy hand, Duncan draws parallels to the witchcraft trials of 17th-century Salem. When Sarah faces hanging at the hands of a drunken mob of kids, Charlie--son of a bookseller whose store was torched for selling ``books that people didn't approve of''--saves her by convincing his classmates that they were all in Salem in a past life, and need to put it behind them. In addition to such implausible scenes, some subplots simply trail off, teenagers sound like adults, and too many characters are suddenly versed in witchcraft. Readers are repeatedly informed that the town is ``conservative'' and churchgoers are uniformly hypocritical. Bleakly shallow. (further reading) (Fiction. 12+)
