Early on in Carol Goodman’s new novel, we learn that “Arcadia was a place in Greece where life was supposed to be perfect.” You can almost hear the ominous music swelling, tipping us off that all is not quite right.
The story follows a young widow, Meg Rosenthal, who has been forced to sell her home in Great Neck after her husband’s sudden death. She moves upstate with her teenage daughter Sally to remote Arcadia, where a job at a boarding school awaits. The school is secluded, the woods nearby off-limits, and the dean, Ivy St. Clare (the book is filled with similarly florid names — Vera, Dymphna), seems morbidly devoted to the place, but Meg and Sally manage to settle in to their new lives.
At least, for a little while. The school is rocked by the suspicious death of its star student during one of the many pagan-influenced seasonal rituals that make Arcadia’s campus life seem not dissimilar to “The Wicker Man.” Sally retreats, spending her time bonding with fellow students, drifting further apart from her mother. Meanwhile Meg starts a flirtation with the town’s sheriff, Callum Reade, and stumbles upon some long-lost journals.
With dark secrets, hidden journals and isolated settings, Goodman is exploring the same territory — one could say almost too similar — as her bestseller “The Lake of Dead Languages.” But between plot twists, Goodman addresses some serious questions of the role of women, both as artists and caregivers.
Arcadia Falls
by Carol Goodman
Ballantine Books