The Broken Girls

On a moonlit night in 1950, Idlewild Hall, a forbidding boarding school in small-town Vermont, shrouded in whispered tales and enveloped by dense woods, becomes the quagmire where the fates of four roommates are irreversibly entwined. These young damsels – Katie, CeCe, Roberta, and Sonia – find solace in each other’s company, as they traverse the mire of adolescence within the derelict walls of a school that’s reputedly haunted by the specter of a veiled lady.

With a tiptoe through time, we slip into 2014, where journalist Fiona Sheridan is consumed by the perplexing events surrounding her sister’s murder. Two decades prior, Deb Sheridan’s body was discovered near the enigmatic Idlewild Hall. Though her sister’s boyfriend, Tim Christopher, is convicted for the crime, Fiona senses discord in the chords of this tragedy.

As Fiona’s investigation ineluctably draws her to Idlewild Hall, the facades crumble to reveal the timeworn school’s grim secrets. The disused boarding school is undergoing refurbishment, and with each brick and mortar repositioned, the school relinquishes its ghosts and secrets, tightening the coils of past and present.

In an ingenious interplay between time periods, Fiona unearths the stories of the four roommates from 1950. Katie, strong yet vulnerable; CeCe, with her vast knowledge of herbs and an aura of mystique; Roberta, hiding behind her pen, creating worlds with her stories; and Sonia, harboring shadows from her past during WWII, escaping the Nazi grip. These four girls, whose lives bristle with secrets and youthful dreams, become pillars of Fiona’s quest.

As the story stretches its tendrils across timelines, Fiona’s tenacious inquiry converges with the enigmatic Mary Hand, the phantom enveloped in lore, believed to haunt Idlewild Hall. The juxtaposition of Fiona’s pursuit for the truth about her sister’s death and the tantalizing tales of the four roommates, fashions a mesmerizing orchestration of suspense.

The novel is brilliantly aggrandized by Rebecca Lowman’s exceptional oratory prowess. Her voice, supple as antique leather, weaves the shadows of Idlewild Hall into the very fabric of the listener’s soul. The timbre of her narration, laced with an indefinable magnetism, guides the listener through the labyrinthine corridors of this haunting tale. The Book of Cold Cases and Lost Among the Living can match to the status of this superbly created book and can act as a pair.