In this nuanced debut novel, Watts (Easter Mice!) relates the story of 14-year-old Albion Straight, apprentice stonecutter in 1835 in the Genesee valley in rural New York State. Journal entries describe Albion's work carving gravestones ("Our tools are cold and hard but they can make a softness, if our skills prevail, out of sandstone and marble and slate") and life with his kindly master's family, including Little Watty, a peculiar, fey child who sees portents and signs everywhere, from Halley's Comet to his vision-plagued dreams. The author slowly and effectively builds a sense of dread as Albion's skills attract the attention of a strange visitor, who hires him to work at Goodspell, an eerie, half-finished mansion comprised of "huge beams jutted this way and that like the bones of a dead giant." As Albion's true mission unfolds, his work designing a memorial for his employer's late wife becomes entangled with the yearnings of his employer's daughter, a beautiful, lonely young woman and the spitting image of her mother. The manor's hidden passageways and disquieting sounds inspire some of the author's most memorable writing, which stirs a sense of foreboding à la Jane Eyre.
Despite the vivid imagery, however, the plot sputters to a rather predictable climax. Still, it's an intriguing tale, and the ominous, claustrophobic tone that Watts sustains marks this writer as one to watch. Ages 10-14. (Aug.)
