IN MARGARET’S WORDS – THE BACKSTORY

“This book takes place in Little Sands on the old homestead of some of my ancestors, the MacNeills. Upstairs in my grandma’s house, there was a room that was nailed shut. It is said to have belonged to one of the young women of the family who had been disgraced in some way, had committed suicide, had run away, or some such tale. (It depends on who was talking.) Once she had gone, her father nailed the bedroom door shut from the inside and crawled out a window. The room had never been open since. Of course, the house is gone now, but it was deemed to be haunted by someone who is sensitive to such things. As a child, I have slept in another room in that house and felt perfectly safe. As a sensitive myself from a young age, I’m sure I would have felt someone or something, but I didn’t–or did I?

It was an eerie old house in the dark, lit by oil lamps. The electricity had not come to it and probably would not, as the lineman said it was too far from the road. The lane was probably close to a mile long, and there was a brook that crossed under a little bridge about halfway up. The setting was perfect for a spooky fiction about this young girl’s history, whatever it was; and Molly and Lucy are on hand to sort things out and make some mischief of their own.”