Publishers Weekly
New Hampshire teen Dana Landgrave enters counseling with creepy Dr. Sprague, who repeatedly hypnotizes her in an attempt to find the cause of her eerily real nightmare, in which a boy is being crushed to death by an altar stone. Over the course of these sessions, Dana uncovers "a direct pipeline to two former incarnations," a 16th-century tapestry designer, and an 18th-century painter's assistant. In both cases, what she uncovers about her past behavior disturbs and confuses her. "I don't know who I am anymore, and I'm afraid to find out," she admits. The modern Dana is no jewel—hostile and mouthy, she continually pushes her dreamboat boyfriend, Chase, away—but the real problem here is that the plot is too contrived to be believed. When not only Sprague but also the demonic yearbook editor who took credit for Dana's photographs turn out to be antagonists in her past lives, Dana asks, "What were the chances?" and readers will, too. Coincidences put Dana in London (her home in a past life) for the summer, and lead her to an open-air market where she finds a 16th-century locket that belonged to one of her former selves and that contains a portrait of the boy in her dreams. Townley (The Great Good Thing) raises an intriguing question about the nature of the soul—is it "real, a permanent self that carried over from life to life," Dana wonders—but his characters don't explore it. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)
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KLIATT
- Claire Rosser
Ghostly, weird, time-bending experiences are the core of The Red Thread's plot. Dana, the heroine, is 16. She has a wonderful boyfriend and they both love and help care for Dana's younger brother Ben, who was severely hurt in an accident. Dana has her own troubles dealing with this accident; and she has horrible nightmares, so her family sends her to a psychiatrist. This doctor encourages Dana to go back in time through hypnosis to previous lives, hoping that by doing so, she can resolve the horrors that are causing her nightmares. Dana lives with her family in America in Portsmouth, NH, a town with a great interest in its history. They all go to England, with Dana's boyfriend Chase along to help out with young Ben, who has to be in a wheelchair. In England Dana is close to places she feels she knows well, places from her past, from other lifetimes. Who has been reincarnated as whom? Is the villain from a past story in Dana's life alive in the present? These questions haunt Dana as she tries to be brave enough to return to the past to resolve the present. Townley seems familiar with the settings and has allowed his adolescent characters to be highly intelligent, responsible people. It's Townley's skill that makes the places and people seem real, and he is able to keep the tension high throughout.
Children's Literature
- Gail C. Krause
Haunted by nightmares and insomnia by night and troubled with claustrophobia by day, sixteen-year-old Dana Landgrove has a difficult time coping with her life, just as she found it difficult to cope in her past lives. She sees a therapist who talks her into letting him hypnotize her to help solve her problems; the problem is that those trips into her past cause her more consternation and worry as she begins to think that she was a murderer in one of those lives. Besides dealing with her problems, she must help her younger brother regain his physical strength and confidence after a school bus accident leaves him confined in a wheelchair. He helps her by identifying a coat of arms on an antique locket her boyfriend purchases for her in an open-air market in Britain. This information leads to a trip to a castle where Dana uncannily knows the intricacies of a tapestry hanging in the great hall. The curator of the museum wonders how she knows so much about it, and she realizes she is an expert on the tapestry because she designed it in a past life. She goes back into two lives and solves the mystery of who actually killed the heir to the Breen castle. All of the people in her present life were also part of her past lives, and each trip back garners new information and discoveries until she realizes that the threads of all three lives come together to reveal the truth. In the end, she is shocked to find out who the real murderer was.
Kirkus Reviews
A tangled mystery leads 16-year-old Dana to tangled emotions, some of which aren't her own, even though they are. Confused? So is Dana. Or is she Hannah, an 18th-century unmarried painter? Or a small boy in 1583, heir to a legacy but murdered at age ten? Plagued by nightmares and waking visions, Dana lets Dr. Sprague try hypnotic therapy. In trances, Dana relives isolated scenes from the past. A trip to England brings another flood of memories as Dana, her ten-year-old brother in a wheelchair and her ever-patient boyfriend Chase follow a locket with a portrait of young William Breen (the boy in Dana's visions) to the Breen family castle. A tapestry and chapel are essential to Dana's past lives. Guilt and shame torment her from her haunting new/old identities. Back in New Hampshire, Sprague and Dana continue the probe to a racing climax. Revenge and devotion (both familial and religious) are prime themes, with first-rate suspense and emotion. Captivating and shivery. (Fantasy. YA)
