Dee Vale is a typical country girl in post-First World War Ontario, save for one defining feature: like her grandmother, she was born with what generations of superstitious villagers and farmers have referred to as “the Sight.” For Dee’s grandmother, the gift allows her to see events that will soon happen, a handy skill for a woman who ekes out a living as a midwife. Dee’s version of the Sight offers far more ambiguous and frightening rewards. Dee can see the confused, mournful spirits of the dead who have yet to cross over to the other side.

Dee’s life with her grandmother is about as normal as it could be, until the local police come tramping through the Vale’s yard on their way up Pike’s Mountain to investigate a grisly discovery: the skeletal remains of a teenage girl. When the bones are confirmed as those of Mary Ann Simpson, a local girl and friend of Dee’s who disappeared four years earlier, the village is overwhelmed by suspicion and fear. When another local girl is murdered, the attention is directed at Dee’s grandmother, long suspected of witchcraft by the village’s more upstanding families.

Dee’s investigation into the crimes forms the narrative arc of a story that combines elements of historical and detective fiction, the ghost story, the paranormal caper, and the YA coming of age saga, a combination that makes for rich reading but ultimately dampens some of the novel’s suspense.

Dee is an intriguing heroine surrounded by a rich and diverse cast of supporting characters, but readers may wish that Barbara Haworth-Attard had narrowed the novel’s focus to allow more space for Dee’s troubled relationship with the local spirits. After all, most young readers, if given the choice, would pick the Sight over the local sights every time.