Watts, Leander. Wild ride to heaven.

Houghton Mifflin. 169p. c2003. 0-618-26805-7 $16.00. JS

The eerie cover, depicting the face of a young woman, one eye green and one eye white as a moonstone, sets the tone of this gothic novel by the author of Stonecutter. Wild Ride to Heaven takes place in the backwoods of New York State, in a forest so remote the nearest village is nine miles away--we don't know the era, but it seems to be the 19th century. The narrator of the story is Hannah, who lives alone with her father who makes charcoal to sell from burning the trees of the forest. Her father loves to read and dream, but this takes strange turns and makes him dissatisfied with his life and yearning for treasure that would free him. He goes so far as to "sell" his daughter Hannah to the brothers who live nearby, in denial that she would suffer in any way. The brothers are ignorant oafs who soon want to marry Hannah, and she must outwit them to escape. The forest holds mysteries, and help for Hannah in the person of Brother Boy, a younger brother of the oafs, who lives apart from his brothers because he is an albino who must avoid the sun. Hannah takes refuge in Brother Boy's camps, she begins to teach him to read, and they discover a treasure that just may satisfy Hannah's father--the tusk of a wooly mammoth.

As in Stonecutter, the language of the narrator reflects the slightly archaic speech of the rural people of upstate New York. This is a sample of Hannah's tale: "As I went, even my wrath toward Pa waned. He'd been a fool. He'd always be a fool, I supposed. But he was still my pa, and I couldn't remain angry forever." The descriptions of the Northern Lights are wonderful: ".... ghostly wavering lights. There was color to them, but l think not a color I'd ever seen. They turned and throbbed and roiled like a cloud of angry smoke. But so silent, so far away.... Now the glow was pulsing like a bruise in the sky's flesh." Claire Rosser, KLIATT