Shan L Spyker

The Way of the River Shan L Spyker

Life is perfect for fifteen-year-old Elinora Wolton...for the most part. Anxious by nature and resistant to the often painful metamorphosis of growing up, she is most content when she is able to avoid uncomfortable feelings and experiences. This proves easy enough to do living a secure, sheltered life at Kellandale, a quiet country estate that has been isolated from many of the world's problems.



But in Kellandale Wood (Book One): The Way of the River, a middle grade fantasy/adventure set long ago in the country of Eldmoor, this estate also happens to sit on the edge of a vast forest. Known as Wyches Wood to some, it is a forest with a centuries-old reputation of being haunted. No one has dared to enter it for the last two hundred years, and Elinora and her precocious, easily bored younger sister Tillie have been strictly forbidden from going near it by their parents-a fact that drives Tillie mad.



This all changes when they witness a man dropping a mysterious parcel into the river within their property. Despite Elinora's initial reluctance, Tillie, curious and relentlessly persistent, persuades Elinora to go searching for it with her, taking them deep into the woods. There they discover an abandoned young wolfhound with an extraordinary ability, setting them off on a dangerous rescue mission and pitting them against a greedy and unscrupulous man.



As they begin to unravel the circumstances surrounding the abandonment, they discover what links their family to the forest, and the forest to the pup's own traumatic past. Together with their many allies, Elinora and Tillie set out to achieve what seems impossible, ultimately revealing the truth of the legendary enchanted woods and the mystic river that flows through it.