{"product_id":"the-winter-people-isbn-9780804169967","title":"The Winter People","description":"\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER • The \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Invited\u003c\/i\u003e will shock you with a simmering psychological thriller about ghostly secrets, dark choices, and the unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters. • \"One of the year's most chilling novels.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Miami Herald\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWest Hall, Vermont, has always been a town of strange disappearances and old legends. The most mysterious is that of Sara Harrison Shea, who, in 1908, was found dead in the field behind her house just months after the tragic death of her daughter.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNow, in present day, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara’s farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her younger sister. Alice has always insisted that they live off the grid, a decision that has weighty consequences when Ruthie wakes up one morning to find that Alice has vanished. In her search for clues, she is startled to find a copy of Sara Harrison Shea's diary hidden beneath the floorboards of her mother's bedroom. As Ruthie gets sucked into the historical mystery, she discovers that she’s not the only person looking for someone that they’ve lost. But she may be the only one who can stop history from repeating itself.\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of the Year\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Everything you could want in a classic ghost story.” —Chris Bohjalian, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Light in the Ruins\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“One of the year’s most chilling novels. . . . Enthralling.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Miami Herald\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Crisp, mysterious and scary. . . . Reminiscent of Stephen King.” —\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A hauntingly beautiful read.” —Oprah.com  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Winter People\u003c\/i\u003e is hypnotic, gripping and deeply moving. . . . A dream from which I didn't want to wake.”  —Lisa Unger, author of \u003ci\u003eIn the Blood\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“McMahon is a scrupulous writer, nicely attentive to the nuances of character and landscape.... The mournful voice of Sara Shea lingers in the memory, and McMahon, wisely, gives her the last word.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An edge-of-your-seat scary ghost story. . . . I will never look at the woods behind my home in the same way again!” —Heather Gudenkauf, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Weight of Silence\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Not a book to be read late at night, or in a creaky old house, \u003ci\u003eThe Winter People \u003c\/i\u003eis a literary thriller to savor.” —\u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Deliciously terrifying. . . . Jennifer McMahon knows how to conjure your darkest fears and nightmares . . . pulling you deep into the forbidden, secret world of \u003ci\u003eThe Winter People\u003c\/i\u003e.” —Chevy Stevens, author of \u003ci\u003eAlways Watching\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Winter People\u003c\/i\u003e blends the anguish of loss and the yearning for connection into one great story, well told.”  —Kate Alcott, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Dressmaker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“McMahon gives readers just what they want: can’t-put-it-down, stay-up-until-dawn reading. . . . [\u003ci\u003eThe Winter People\u003c\/i\u003e] is also a poignant reminder of what grief can drive humans to do.” —\u003ci\u003eBookPage \u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"Gives a fresh twist to a small-town ghost story.” —\u003ci\u003eThe South Florida Sun-Sentinel \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Hard to put down.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Oklahoman \u003c\/i\u003eJENNIFER McMAHON is the author of six novels, including the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestsellers \u003ci\u003eIsland of Lost Girls\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePromise Not to Tell\u003c\/i\u003e. She graduated from Goddard College and studied poetry in the MFA Writing Program at Vermont College. She currently lives with her partner and daughter in Montpelier, Vermont.\u003ci\u003eExcerpted from the Hardcover Edition \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVisitors from the Other Side\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Secret Diary of Sara Harrison Shea\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJanuary 29, 1908\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first time I saw a sleeper, I was nine years old.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt  was the spring before Papa sent Auntie away--before we lost my brother,  Jacob. My sister, Constance, had married the fall before and moved to  Graniteville.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was up exploring in the woods, near the Devil’s  Hand, where Papa had forbidden us to play. The trees were leafing out,  making a lush green canopy overhead. The sun had warmed the soil, giving  the damp woods a rich, loamy smell. Here and there beneath the beech,  sugar maple, and birch trees were spring flowers: trilliums, trout  lilies, and my favorite, jack-in-the-pulpit, a funny little flower with a  secret: if you lift the striped hood, you’ll find the preacher  underneath. Auntie had shown me this, and taught me that you could dig  up the tubers and cook them like turnips. I had just found one and was  pulling back the hood, looking for the tiny figure underneath, when I  heard footsteps, slow and steady, moving my way. Heavy feet dragging  through the dry leaves, stumbling on roots. I wanted to run, but froze  with panic, having squatted down low behind a rock just as a figure  moved into the clearing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI recognized her at once--Hester Jameson.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe’d  died two weeks before from typhoid fever. I had attended her funeral  with Papa and Jacob, seen her laid to rest in the cemetery behind the  church up by Cranberry Meadow. Everyone from school was there, all in  Sunday best.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHester’s father, Erwin, ran Jameson’s Tack and Feed  Shop. He wore a black coat with frayed sleeves, and his nose was red and  running. Beside him stood his wife, Cora Jameson, a heavyset woman who  had a seamstress shop in town. Mrs. Jameson sobbed into a lace  handkerchief, her whole body heaving and trembling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had been to  funerals before, but never for someone my own age. Usually it was the  very old or the very young. I couldn’t take my eyes off the casket, just  the right size for a girl like me. I stared at the plain wooden box  until I grew dizzy, wondering what it might feel like to be laid out  inside. Papa must have noticed, because he took my hand and gave it a  squeeze, pulled me a little closer to him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReverend Ayers, a  young man then, said Hester was with the angels. Our old preacher,  Reverend Phelps, was stooped over, half deaf, and none of what he said  made any sense--it was all frightening metaphors about sin and  salvation. But when Reverend Ayers with his sparkling blue eyes spoke,  it felt as if he said each word right to me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor  the first time, I understood the word of God, because Reverend Ayers  spoke it. His voice, all the girls said, could soothe the Devil himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA  red-winged blackbird cried out conk-a-reee from a nearby hazel bush. He  puffed up his red shoulders and sang over and over, as loud as he  could, his call almost hypnotic; even Reverend Ayers paused to look.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMrs. Jameson dropped to her knees, keening. Mr. Jameson tried to pull her up, but did not have the strength.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI  stood right beside Papa, clutching his hand, as dirt was shoveled down  on the coffin of poor Hester Jameson. Hester had a crooked front tooth,  but a beautifully delicate face. She had been the best in our class at  arithmetic. Once, for my birthday, she gave me a note with a flower  pressed inside. A violet it was, dried out and perfectly preserved. May  your day be as special as you are, she’d written in perfect cursive. I  tucked it into my Bible, where it stayed for years, until it either  disintegrated or fell out, I cannot recall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow, two weeks after  her very own funeral, Hester’s sleeper caught sight of me there in the  woods, crouching behind the rock. I shall never forget the look in her  eyes--the frightened half-recognition of someone waking from a horrible  dream.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had heard about sleepers; there was even a game we  played in the schoolyard in which one child would be laid out dead in a  circle of violets and forget-me-nots. Then someone would lean down and  whisper magic words in the dead girl’s ear, and she would rise and chase  all the other children. The first one she caught would be the next to  die.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think I may have even played this game once with Hester Jameson.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI  had heard whispers, rumors of sleepers called back from the land of the  dead by grieving husbands and wives, but was certain they only existed  in the stories old women liked to tell each other while they folded  laundry or stitched stockings--something to pass the time, and to make  any eavesdropping children hurry home before dark.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had been sure, up until then, that God in his infinite wisdom would not have allowed such an abomination.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHester  and I were not ten feet apart. Her blue dress was filthy and torn, her  corn-silk hair in tangles. She gave off the musty smell of damp earth,  but there was something else behind it, an acrid, greasy, burnt odor,  similar to what you smell when you blow out a tallow candle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOur eyes met, and I yearned to speak, to say her name, but could only manage a strangled-sounding Hss.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHester ran off into the woods like a startled rabbit. I stayed frozen, clinging pathetically to my rock like a bit of lichen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom down the path leading to the Devil’s Hand came another figure, running, calling Hester’s name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was her mother, Cora Jameson.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe  stopped when she saw me, face flushed and frantic. She was breathing  hard and had scratches on her face and arms, pieces of dry leaves and  twigs tangled in her hair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Tell no one,” she said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“But why?” I asked, stepping out from behind the rock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe  looked right at me--through me, almost, as if I were a pane of dirty  window glass. “Someday, Sara,” she said, “maybe you’ll love someone  enough to understand.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen she ran off into the woods, following her daughter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI told Auntie about it later.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Is it really possible?” I asked. “To bring someone back like that?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe  were down by the river, picking fiddleheads, filling Auntie’s basket  with the curled fern tops, as we did each spring. Then we’d bring them  home and make a creamy soup stuffed full of wild greens and herbs that  Auntie had gathered along the way. We were also there to check the  traps--Auntie had caught a beaver just two days before and was hoping  for another. Beaver pelts were a rarity and brought a high price. They  were once nearly as common as squirrels’, Auntie said, but trappers had  taken all except a handful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBuckshot was with us, nosing the  ground, ears attentive to every little sound. I never knew if he was all  wolf, or only part. Auntie had found him as a pup, when he’d fallen  into one of her pit traps after being all shot up by someone. She’d  carried him home, pulled the buckshot pellets out of him, stitched him  up, and nursed him back to health. He’d been by her side ever since.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“He was lucky you found him,” I said after hearing the story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Auntie told me. “He and I were meant for one another.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI  never saw such devotion in a dog--or any animal, for that matter. His  wounds had healed, but the buckshot left him blind in his right eye,  which was milky white. His ghost eye, Auntie called it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“He came  so close to death, he’s got one eye back there still,” she explained. I  loved Buckshot, but I hated that milky-white moon that seemed to see  everything and nothing all at once.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAuntie was not related to me  by blood, but she cared for me, raised me after my own mother died  giving birth to me. I had no memory of my mother--the only proofs of her  existence were my parents’ wedding photograph, the quilt she’d sewn  that I slept under every night, and the stories my older brother and  sister told.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy brother claimed I had my mother’s laugh. My  sister said that my mother had been the best dancer in the county, that  she was the envy of all the other girls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAuntie’s people came  from up north, in Quebec. Her father had been a trapper; her mother, an  Indian woman. Auntie carried a hunting knife, and wore a long deerskin  coat decorated with bright beads and porcupine quills. She spoke French,  and sang songs in a language I never did recognize. She wore a ring  carved from yellowed bone on her right pointer finger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What does it say?” I asked once, touching the strange letters and symbols on its surface.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“That life is a circle,” she answered.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeople  in town were frightened of Auntie, but their fear did not keep them  away from her door. They followed the well-worn path to her cabin in the  woods out behind the Devil’s Hand, carrying coins, honey,  whiskey--whatever they had to trade for her remedies. Auntie had drops  for colic, tea for fever, even a little blue bottle that she swore  contained a potion so powerful that with one drop the object of your  heart’s desire would be yours. I knew better than to doubt her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere  were other things I knew about Auntie, too. I’d seen her sneak out of  Papa’s bedroom in the early morning, heard the sounds that came from  behind his locked door when she visited him there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI also knew  better than to cross her. She had a fiery temper and little patience  with people who did not see things her way. If people refused to pay her  for her services, she’d call on them, sprinkle their homes with black  powder pulled from one of her leather pouches, and speak a strange  incantation. Terrible things would befall those families from then on:  sicknesses, fires, crop losses, even death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI tossed a handful of dark-green fiddleheads into the basket.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Tell me, Auntie, please,” I begged, “can the dead come back?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAuntie looked at me a long time, head cocked to the side, her small, dark eyes fixed on mine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Yes,”  she told me at last. “There is a way. Few know of it, but those who do,  pass it down to their children. Because you are the closest I will ever  come to a child of my own, the secret will go to you. I will write it  all down, everything I know about sleepers. I will fold up the papers,  put them in an envelope, and seal it with wax. You will hide it away,  and one day, when you are ready, you will open it up.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“How will I know I am ready?” I asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe smiled, showing her small teeth, pointed like a fox’s and stained brown from tobacco. “You will know.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI  am writing these words in secret, hidden under covers. Martin and  Lucius believe I am sleeping. I hear them downstairs, drinking coffee  and discussing my prognosis. (Not good, I’m afraid.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI have been  going back in my mind, thinking over how all of this began, piecing  things together the way one might sew a quilt. But, oh, what a hideous  and twisted quilt mine would be!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Gertie,” I hear Martin say  above the clink of a spoon stirring coffee in his favorite tin mug. I  imagine the furrow of his brow, the deep worry lines there; how sad his  face must be after he spoke her name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI hold my breath and listen hard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Sometimes a tragedy breaks a person,” Lucius says. “Sometimes they will never be whole again.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf  I close my eyes even now, I can still see my Gertie’s face, feel her  sugary breath on my cheek. I can so vividly recall our last morning  together, hear her saying, “If snow melts down to water, does it still  remember being snow?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMartin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJanuary 12, 1908\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Wake up, Martin.” A soft whisper, a flutter against his cheek. “It’s time.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMartin  opened his eyes, leaving the dream of a woman with long dark hair.  She’d been telling him something. Something important, something he was  not supposed to forget.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe turned over in bed. He was alone,  Sara’s side of the bed cold. He sat up, listening carefully. Voices,  soft giggles across the hall, from behind Gertie’s bedroom door.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHad  Sara spent the whole night in with Gertie again? Surely it couldn’t be  good for the girl, to smother her like that. Sometimes he worried that  Sara’s attachment to Gertie simply wasn’t . . . healthy. Just last week,  Sara had kept Gertie home from school for three straight days, and for  those three days Sara doted on her--plaiting her hair, making her a new  dress, baking her cookies, playing hide-and-seek. Sara’s niece, Amelia,  offered to take Gertie for the weekend, and Sara had made excuses--she  gets homesick so easily, she’s so frail--but Martin understood that it  was Sara who could not bear to be without Gertie. Sara never seemed  whole unless Gertie was by her side.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe pushed the worried thoughts away. Better to focus on the problems he understood and could do something about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe house was cold, the fire out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe  peeled back the covers, threw his legs over the side of the bed, and  pulled on his pants. His bad foot hung there like a hoof till he shoved  it into the special boot fashioned for him by the cobbler in Montpelier.  The soles were worn through, and he’d stuffed the bottoms of both boots  with dry grass and cattail fluff, all layered over scraps of leather,  in a futile attempt to keep the dampness out. There was no money for new  custom-made boots now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBlight had ruined most of last fall’s  potato crop, and they relied on the money they got from selling the  potatoes to the starch factory to get through the winter. It was only  January, and the root cellar was nearly bare: a few spongy potatoes and  carrots, some Hubbard squash, half a dozen jars of string beans and  tomatoes Sara had put up last summer, a little salt pork from the hog  they’d butchered in November (they’d traded most of the meat for dry  goods at the general store). Martin would have to get a deer soon if  they were going to have enough to eat. Sara had a talent for stretching  what little food they had, for making milk gravy and biscuits with a bit  of salt pork into a meal, but she couldn’t create something from  nothing.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305160691941,"sku":"NP9780804169967","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780804169967.jpg?v=1767742236","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-winter-people-isbn-9780804169967","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}