Will Taylor is a student at Berkeley in the '70s when his best friend, Ben, introduces him to the Feierabends, the family of the young woman he's dating. Will becomes infatuated with Livvy, a younger sister, but is puzzled by some of the family's behavior and by the mysterious helpers around their home. When Livvy falls into an irreversible sleep, it's Ben who leads Will to the improbable truth: a fairy tale written by the Brothers Grimm, lost before they could publish it, about a man who makes a bargain with a supernatural creature: his family would have great prosperity, as long as one daughter from every generation endures a seven-year magical nap while her spirit is enslaved in a supernatural war. The deal is real... and it's been in place for three centuries.
Will impulsively decides to rescue Livvy from the spell, but that's only the first half of what Lisa Goldstein has in store for readers. Livvy's freedom comes with a price: for years, Will wonders if there will be greater consequences for cheating the magical beings. Then, when she's in the hospital with a mysterious illness, he desperately re-invokes the bargain. This time, the other realm takes their young son, and the entire family rallies together to win him back.
The Uncertain Places benefits greatly from Goldstein's meticulous combination of fairy-tale logic and modern characterizations, and while the outcome of Will's effort to outsmart his magical foes is never really in doubt, Goldstein is still able to keep us wondering up to the end whether there might have been one last catch to the deal. --Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com