Ghosts of memories

Book review: Haunted Ground by Irina Shapiro

Imagine having a strange fascination for a country you have never visited, imagine feeling a pull towards a house you don't even know exists, imagine feeling a certainty that you belong to a particular place more than anywhere else in the world. That is how Alexandra Maxwell (or Lexi as she prefers to be called) has always felt - that she somehow belongs to England, to a place steeped in history. 

Her dreams of visiting England have always been ignored by her American parents, but they become a reality when her father passes away, leaving her the family business. She promptly sells off the business and flies to England to buy a house which she can convert into her own Bed & Breakfast.

That is how she lands up in a small, remote village in Lincolnshire not even on the map and discovers the house that she has always unconsciously searched for:

The house loomed in front of me. tall and gray; the stone walls bleached by decades of sunshine and rain and buffeted by wind, the south side dressed in a thick coat of ivy that crept almost as far as the gabled roof. The half-lowered blinds in the upstairs windows gave the impression of hooded eyes, wearily watching me as I stood there on the lawn, my whole being flooded with joy and a sudden sense of deja vu. 
This was it; this was the house I'd been looking for. I didn't know where I would find it, but I knew exactly what it would be like, and how I would feel when I finally saw it.

Lexi discovers a faded sign announcing that the house is up for sale and immediately contacts the estate agent to buy it. The agent, Paula, is overjoyed to have sold off the property which had apparently been on the market for a long time. She tells Lexi that the property had belonged to an old lady named Mrs. Hughes whose ancestors had lived in the house since its construction in the seventeenth century. The house is bordered by trees and an old creek, beside which Lexi spots a mysterious ruin. It seems the ruin is part of the property and the old owner even left a stipulation in her will that the ruin is not to be demolished. The ruin obviously is an older structure than the house but no one seems to know for what purpose it was built or who it originally belonged to.

From here, the novel starts alternating between the past (1650) and present, with two different story lines - the seventeenth century plot about a soldier named Brendan Carr in Oliver Cromwell's army, and the present-day story about Lexi's first days in the house. In the past, Brendan is disillusioned with Oliver Cromwell's cruel battles against the Scottish and deserts the army. He returns home, only to find that his father is dead, his younger brother has usurped his property and his fiancee, his beloved sister Meg is widowed and his mother is on the deathbed. His scheming brother, Jasper, throws him out of the house and  sends men to murder him on the highway. Brendan is able to kill the assassins but is severely wounded in the process. He somehow manages to reach his uncle Caleb's house in Lincolnshire, where an old priest gives him shelter and a young girl called Rowan nurses him back to health. Even as a tender relationship starts growing between Brendan and the mute Rowan, they are surrounded by enemies and traitors - Jasper, Rowan's betrothed Stephen and spies sent by Cromwell to capture Rowan.

Oliver Cromwell

In the present, Lexi hires a contracting agency owned by a handsome Scot, Aidan Mackay, to restore and redesign the house. As Aidan and his workers dispose off the old furniture, Lexi slowly starts settling down in the house. She notices a man who emerges from the ruin every evening to pray in front of an old tree and then goes back dejectedly inside the ruin. One night, she wakes up to see a faint candle burning on the second floor of the ruin and a man, similar to the one she had seen earlier, reading a book. But in the morning, when she and Aidan go into the ruin, they find that the second floor and stairs no longer exist and even the roof has caved in; no living person could have actually climbed up to the second floor. So who is the man Lexi had seen? Why does Lexi keep seeing the same sad man every day at twilight? If he is a ghost, is he in some way tied to the ruin? Why does he seem to repent in front of the tree endlessly? One day, while digging up an old wall in the basement of the house, Aidan's workers find a locked room which it seems hasn't been opened in centuries. They break down the door to find a coffin with a skeleton inside. The name 'Brendan Carr' is engraved on the coffin, but no one in the village or vicinity seems to know who Brendan Carr or his descendants were. 

To add to the mystery of the past, there seems to be a mystery in the present too about Lexi's background. Some old residents of the village seem to recognize Lexi and express happiness that she has finally found her way back to where she belongs. Lexi is confused by what they mean but no one wants to explain their strange comment. She comes to know purely by chance that a murder had taken place in her house some twenty years back - when Mrs. Hughes' daughter Kelly was murdered by her husband. She is driven to know more about how she is connected to the house. Who is Lexi really? What secrets are people hiding from her? Who can lead her to the truth?

As skeletons in the closet are revealed, both literally and figuratively, Lexi realizes that she needs to find the answers to the questions plaguing her past and present, so that she can move on. She gets support from Aidan in this and there is a nice little romance between the two, but this is largely overshadowed by the poignant and doomed love story of Brendan and Rowan in the seventeenth century. How are the two story lines tied together? How are the ruin and the house connected? What eventually happens to Brendan and Rowan? Are the ghosts of the past and the present laid to rest at last by Lexi? To find out, you have to read "Haunted Ground" yourself :) I liked the book and would recommend it to lovers of paranormal or past-present mysteries.