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.