Cedar and her boyfriend Finn are enjoying a street busking
festival in Halifax when Cedar starts to feel unwell and
goes home early. Next day Finn has disappeared and his
apartment is empty. Cedar is pregnant.
THROUGH THE DOOR skips ahead seven years to Cedar working
as a graphic designer instead of an artist, with her mother
Maeve babysitting and young Eden clamouring for attention.
Eden has started to ask about her absent father, and
Cedar's upset but tries to explain. Then the little girl
opens her bedroom door and finds a scene of sand and
pyramids instead of a room. By trial and error the pair
work out that Eden is the one causing the changes of scene -
next time she closes and opens the door, a seaside cottage
appears, whereas Cedar has no effect. Next day Cedar takes
Eden to the office with her and asks a fantasy fan whether
magic is just science we don't understand yet. The techie
girl offers to hunt up Finn on the computer, and before long
she's found his parents.
This starts a cycle of chaos for Cedar, as entrances to
pubs appear for meetings with strange folks, Maeve knows
more about Finn than she was telling and Eden vanishes,
perhaps through a door to New York. Poor Cedar is
distraught and feels completely out of her depth. She
learns that some ancient legends of the Celtic times in
Ireland live on, and the people she now meets call
themselves the Tuath de Danaan. They don't consider
themselves mortal humans. One of them has kidnapped young
Eden for her own reasons, on the pretext of taking her to
her father.
I've read several Canadian fantasies which have a door to
another world in common, and the characters seem strangely
eager to go. In Jodi McIsaac's one the De Danaan only get
to revisit Tir na nOg, a beautiful, timeless country every
few centuries, but they sing its praises and recount a lot
of ancient legend mixed with history. At the same time
they're using cell phones and planes. All the talk does
slow down the story and by the time Cedar stops talking
about druids and heads for New York, Eden is in Ireland,
being made to open doors for her captor. This is an
involved, detailed fantasy with a very human girl and
mother to hold our attention. Try THROUGH THE DOOR and see
for yourself.
Single mom Cedar McLeod leads an ordinary but lonely life,
balancing the demands of her career and her six-year-old
daughter, Eden. One day, a fight between the two leads to
the stunning discovery that Eden can open portals to
anywhere she imagines. But before they can learn more about
Eden’s extraordinary gift, the young girl mysteriously
disappears.
Desperate to find answers and her daughter, Cedar seeks out
Eden’s father, who left before Eden was born. What she
discovers challenges everything she’s ever known about the
world around her: Magic is real — and mythical beings from
an ancient world will stop at nothing to possess Eden’s
abilities. Now, Cedar may have to put her faith in all of
them if she hopes to save her daughter’s life.
The first in the Thin Veil series, Through the Door is a
pulse-pounding adventure that takes listeners across the
globe and into the ancient realm of Celtic myths, where the
stakes are high and only the deepest love will survive.