 For as long as she can remember, Hilary has had a special dream. Not much happens in the dream. She simply looks through a window and sees a lake, with a mountain beyond. She has never told anyone of her dream, but she does wonder where it comes from, because she does not remember ever having seen such a scene. Because of the dream, she has always been a little afraid to go to the country, but when her mother’s job is going to take her abroad for the summer, Hilary must go to a great-aunt in New Hampshire. And the very first day she is there, they visit an old lady with a cottage by a lake, and the view from her window is the view that Hilary has seen so many times before. Caught up in a strange set of circumstances, afraid of the view from the window, but more upset by the antagonistic behavior of her older cousin Emily, who teases and persecutes her, Hilary finds herself unexpectedly experiencing events that happened in the eighteenth century. She is a young indentured servant, bitter and desperate. Slowly, Hilary begins to wonder if she is seeing and earlier life she once lived, and if she has come back to atone for the hate she felt then, and the murder that she in a sense committed. Is she being given a new chance? When her cousin is suddenly in danger, she is sure of it. |
