Eventide

Abandonments, rural secrets, and revenge web Goodman’s earnest but overstuffed historical fantasy debut. In June 1907, impoverished 17-year-old Verity Pruitt and her dreamy sister, Lilah, 11, leave New York on an Arkansas-bound orphan train. But Verity’s determination to earn them passage back to New York and study medicine derails when a robber baron and his ethereal schoolteacher niece, Maeve, are approved to adopt only Lilah. To stay close, Verity indentures herself to a kindly farm couple nearby and their charming nephew, Abel. But the secrets of the town’s haunted woods connect the siblings’ institutionalized father, Maeve, and the disappearance of a preacher’s spurned, pregnant daughter; Verity must unravel the connections them to save her sister and herself. Though a warm, grounded romance delights, a sprawl of overfamiliar plot elements undermine their own suspense, and outdated ones—a notably unattractive antagonist, Verity’s gendered fate—may alienate modern readers. A sincere small-town ghost story that never quite coheres. Ages 13–up. Agent: Mary C. Moore, Kimberley Cameron & Assoc. (Oct.)