I had hoped to get this in time to read, photograph and write the review for October, the month I usually review good ghost stories, but it just didn't come together in time.
It's not really a horror or scary story anyway, so maybe it's for the best.
Ophie can see ghosts, since the night in 1922 when her father warned her to take her mother into the woods to escape a lynch mob that burns down their house. Once he knows they're safe, he disappears in a burst of sparkles, and Ophie learns later he was caught by the mob and killed for the offense of exercising his right to vote.
But her mother's not hearing any of Ophie's ghost tales.
They move from Georgia to the big city, Pittsburgh, and first her mom gets a job as a maid in Daffodil Manor. Not much about the house reminds anyone of daffodils. There's nothing light, bright or cheery about this house. It's haunted, by several ghosts, just as all of Pittsburgh is, and they're doing cartwheels that someone who can see and communicate with them has arrived.
And the Manor's matron, the elderly Mrs. Carruthers, who Ophie soon ends up working for as her personal maid, is a racist pill. Ophie briefly finds an ally, of sorts, in her Aunt, who can also talk to spirits, namely her dead husband who she relegates to waiting in the garden outback. But her Aunt also has some rigid ideas of what ghosts are and what they want to do with the living, ideas Ophie's not exactly on board with, given the way her father saved her and her mother.
The one bright spot in working for Mrs. Carruthers is Clara, with her bright personality and wonderful red scarf, who's a breath of fresh air, as light and airy as any daffodil.
When Ophie's Aunt dies, mean cousins steal her momma's savings and rather than be out on the streets, they move into Daffodil Manor. Ophie can't escape the ghosts now: a dark-skinned boy who looks like he was whipped to death, cowering in the hallways; a former Carruthers, who spends all his time pouring over the Manor's accounts in his office; a gardener; and the ghosts who are anchored, or haunting, people who are guests of the Manor.
I won't ruin the big twist, nor what happens after it's revealed. Read for yourself and enjoy this wonderful tale of ghosts exacting justice.
