Eden’s Everdark
by Karen Strong (Author)
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Booktalk: Still grieving the loss of her mother, Eden visits Safina Island, her ancestral home, as a healing balm. But when she discovers an old sketchbook that belonged to her mother, she’s haunted by the images she sees drawn there. A creepy mansion covered with roots and leaves. A monstrous dog with dagger-sharp teeth. And a tall woman with wind-blown hair and long, sharp nails who is as beautiful as she is terrifying.
Days later, exploring the island alone, Eden follows a black cat through a rift in the bright day. She stumbles into Everdark, a parallel world where the sun never rises, where spirits linger between death and the afterlife, and where everything from her mother’s drawings is all too real—especially the Witch of Everdark, who wants to make Eden her eternal daughter.
Can Eden find a way to defeat the witch’s magic? Or will she remain trapped in Everdark forever?
Snippet: Eden slid her finger on the map to the blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. She stared at the sea islands off the coast of Georgia. The largest island was out farther than the rest, an isolated mass. This was Safina Island, her mother’s birthplace.
Her father had bought the map at a North Carolina rest stop and designated her as the navigator instead of using the app on his phone. It was an opportunity for Eden to learn the geography of intersecting routes and identify points of interest.
On their road trip, they ate junk food from vending machines and drank too much soda. They sang songs and laughed at their off-key melodies. It could have been easy to pretend that it had always been just the two of them, but a weight pressed heavy on Eden’s chest like a block of ice. The cold truth of her mother’s death.
She had endured the first days of shock with denial. Then a bitter acceptance when the house stopped being full of strangers offering their condolences with dishes wrapped in foil. During this time her father had treated Eden like a glass flower, a fragile girl who could break at the slightest touch. But when the record heat of the summer turned into the chill of winter snow, Eden’s father slowly transferred his energy back into his work. A professor of evolutionary biology, he was teaching a full course load for the semester. Dr. Langston Leopold was keeping himself very busy.
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