BEHIND THE VEIL

A tormented medium takes on a difficult case in this supernatural novel.

In 1920s Los Angeles, the spiritualist movement is in full swing. Parents and widows of soldiers who died in World War I are still looking for closure, and medium Letitia Hawking is there to deliver it. Letitia uses her “scrying bowl” to view the deathbed moments of the deceased, offering accounts of their final thoughts to the bereaved and bringing them the peace she cannot find for herself. She wears a black veil during her readings to increase the sense of mystery—and to hide her identity from anyone who might recognize her from her past in London. When she’s approached by the wealthy lawyer Alasdair Driscoll about a case involving his still living young niece, Finola, the medium initially declines. Driscoll wants Letitia to sign a confidentiality agreement before they begin, and she can sense a shadow looming behind him. “She didn’t need the Driscolls’ ghosts,” she thinks. “She had enough of her own.” Then Letitia learns just what’s wrong with Finola: The girl is haunted by phantoms, and if she isn’t helped, she will end up in an asylum. Letitia takes pity on the girl—whose condition has much in common with the medium’s own—and begins to have feelings for Driscoll as well. But can Letitia help the living without someone ending up dead? Dawson’s prose is measured and suspenseful as she slowly unspools the tale: “Finola’s breathing was labored, her eyes twitching beneath her lids and forehead clammy, with threads of auburn hair sticking to her skin….There was no darkness attached to the girl, though the room’s low light gave too many shadows for Letitia’s liking. Ever wary of self-protection, she took hesitant footsteps closer.” The author is adept at selling not only the novel’s supernatural elements, but the historical era as well. She takes her time building the characters and the world around them, which pays dividends once the really spooky stuff starts to happen. Like all good ghost stories, the true horrors aren’t entirely spectral: The characters are haunted by personal traumas and secrets as frightening as any spirit.

An old-fashioned ghost story told with inventiveness and style.