There are so many things I want to study and understand in this one, short life. I have mostly studied writing, but art, music, and dance have a hold on my imagination, as well, so I love to read about such things, even as I realize I’ll never have the time or passion to pursue them.

Abstract art is such an area. Sure, I’ve heard of the greats, and viewed some of their work in some of the great galleries around the world. But I confess, I’ve never been taken with it much, knowing there was depth there, and tremendous skill required, but lazily deciding to emphasize more accessible work in the limited time I had to focus on art and artists.

In reading Blue Territory, I found in Robin Lippincott what I most needed, to dip my toe into the water: a talented writer whose passion for Mitchell’s work and dedication to studying it and bringing it to the world through the medium of words allowed me to see who she was and what she accomplished with her work.

I deliberately avoided viewing images of the artist’s work while I read Lippincott’s book, in the same way he says he avoided using those images in his publication, to allow the words to paint the story in the mind of his readers. Only after I finished his pages did I finally see her paintings on the screen, with a depth of understanding and feeling I surely would have lacked, viewing them cold.

Nancy McCabe has written an easy-to-read, complicated book. At first, I was irritated that her protagonist, Maggie-Kate Owen, receives a magnificent Victorian house when her estranged aunt conveniently dies on Maggie’s twenty-first birthday. Unattached, an orphan, with no particular interests to prohibit relocation, she tidily packs up and moves her life, like a blank slate, to its new location. There’s even an easy-on-the-eyes love interest next door. We should all have such troubles, yes?

But as the novel moved back and forward in time, including inserts from her Aunt Beth’s journals (“This Diary Belongs to Elizabeth Margaret Owens – Everyone Else Keep Out”) the multi-layered story began to capture my imagination. Family secrets, including illness, loss, and betrayal, are teased out with a delicate hand. Why is Maggie so apathetic? What is Erin up to? Who is Carol, really? Is the house haunted? Is Maggie possessed?

Rarely has a psychological thriller caused me to care so much about the characters. Rarely has a ghost story lingered as hauntingly.

(Available 11/1/16 from Outpost19 Books)