Lake of Dead Languages / by Carol Goodman

It's been 20 years since Jane Hudson has been home; both to her hometown in upstate New York and remnants of a rather dismal childhood but also to Heart Lake Academy, the prestigious all-girls prep school she attended on scholarship. Now after marrying, having a child, and separating from her husband, Jane along with her 4-year-old daughter Olivia has returned to the school as an interim teacher of Latin. Heart Lake, both the school and the actual lake it sits on, carries a distinctively tragic history, one which includes Jane at an especially personal level. In the early part of the institution's existence, three sisters, all daughters of the school's founder Iris Crevecouer were drowned in the lake together one night, their bodies never found. Ever since then the school has endured the legacy of the Crevecoeur Curse--untimely deaths and accidents involving subsequent students attributed to the dour 'legend of the lake'. Jane's arrival marks the sixtieth year since the Crevecouer girls deaths. It's also twenty years since the calamitous events of Jane's senior year when her two roommates Dierdre and Lucy along with a male friend, Lucy's brother Matt, drowned during a bizarre incident over the Christmas holiday, the circumstances surrounding each's death still a mystery.

Almost immediately upon Jane's return, strange things begin happening. At first, it's just a set of eery coincidences like Olivia's odd ability to maneuver over rocks on the lake without getting her shoes wet, or misplaced items in the classroom turning up in totally random places. But after pages from Jane's old, thought-to-be-lost diary begin mysteriously reappearing, intended for only her to find and possibly as a threat, it's obvious that something really, really weird is going on. The death of another student--dredged up in the lake though officially ruled a suicide--forces the focus fully into the context of Heart Lake's "curse" as buried secrets are unearthed and treacherous dealings push Jane to the forefront of the drama as the story nears its stunning climax.

Goodman's debut novel is a winner. An intricately plotted and captivating tale, it inevitably draws the reader into the story as the dark and shocking secrets of Jane's adolescence and the implications placed on her life now erect a fascinating scenario. Told in flashback mode with alternate chapters returning the story to the present, the reader becomes immersed in the murky world of youth and innocence, passion, guilt and restrained instinct. Sexual rites of passage, pagan rituals and forbidden love all come together as the author brilliantly meshes legend, myth and reality into an evocative tale of deception, misinterpretation, long-buried secrets and upheld lies.