A rich Gilded Age setting grounds a vivid historical fantasy world in The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill by Rowenna Miller (Torn). The veil is thin on Prospect Hill, and for generations the farmers there have offered trades with the fairies to improve a crop, create good luck, or ensure good weather for an important day.
The old ways are fading with the arrival of railways and factories, but at Orchard Crest, the family still knows the value of being a little "superstitious." Keep the old bargains, stay away from the tree that serves as the gate to the fairy realm, and don't mess with fairy rings--or somebody might get themselves trapped in a bargain they didn't understand. Alaine tends the farm while her husband works in town, and her younger sister, Delphine, marries a man from the city in hopes of carving out a new kind of life for herself. But when Alaine learns Delphine's plans to be a society wife are going disastrously wrong, she begins to take risks negotiating with the fairies in new ways.
The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill weaves a heartfelt story of sisterly love with well-developed fairy lore, and depicts the growing spheres of power for women in the years before suffrage. Fans of Ami McKay's The Witches of New York and H.G. Parry's A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians will be enthralled. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library