The Silver Bough - Lisa Tuttle

Nestled on the coast of Scotland, Appleton was once famous for its apples. Now, though the orchards are long gone, locals still dream of the town’s glory days, when an Apple Queen was crowned at the annual fair and good luck seemed a way of life. And outsiders are still drawn to the charming village, including three very different American women.

Enchanted by Appleton’s famously ornate, gold-domed library, divorcée Kathleen Mullaroy has left her cosmopolitan job to start anew as the town’s head librarian. Widowed Nell Westray hopes for a quiet life of gardening in the place where she and her husband spent their happiest moments. And young Ashley Kaldis has come to find her roots, and learns that the town’s fortunes turned when her grandmother was crowned Apple Queen–then mysteriously disappeared.

When a sudden landslide cuts Appleton off from the wider world–and the usual constraints of reality–the village reveals itself to be an extraordinary place, inhabited by legendary beings, secret rooms, and the blossoming of a rare fruit not seen in decades. Most unexpected is a handsome stranger who will draw all three women into an Otherworld in which luck and love will return to Appleton–if only one of them will believe. 

My thoughts:

I really like her style. It's so fairy'tale, but at the same time it fiction. It makes me believe.

This is the story of Appelton. Once it was a nice little town with orchards, now people are leaving. All because of the last Apple Queen and the bad luck that followed.

Our 3 heroines are: Kathleen, a librarian. Nell, who has a few apple trees. And Ashley who wants to know why her grandma left so suddenly and never came back there. They are all different, they are all skeptics, they are all outsiders and they will all meet a handsome stranger.

Because here it is where the magic comes in. There really is something special about this not so much an island anymore. There really are things hiding, and not shown. There really is bad luck over the island, and all cos of an apple. And as the story progresses, more things are shown, you can be a skeptic first, but then you see.

Conclusion:

Tuttle really needs to write more mythic books about Scotland. I like it. I like how it makes me want to believe that there still can be traces of magic, and other beings around :)

Cover

Nice

Paperback, 457 pages
Published March 1st 2013 by Jo Fletcher (first published January 1st 2006)
Fiction / Fairy-tale
Own