Arcadia Falls

by Carol Goodman

Meg Rosenthal is at loose ends: her PhD is unfinished, her husband recently died, and she’s got more debt than she can handle. When she secures a teaching position at the Arcadia School, Meg’s adventure begins.

With her daughter, Sally, she moves to the private art school in upstate New York. In a woodsy setting, the school is chock full of legends and ghosts. And who better to move there, but Meg. Her area of study is fairy tales!

When a student mysteriously dies in the first term, Meg is drawn into the history and legends of the Arcadia School.

I’ve read two other novels by Carol Goodman, and I’ve noticed a pattern: she uses upstate New York as a setting, and she enjoys fairy tales, legends, and myths as plot devices. Having said that, I think Goodman is masterful at setting the story and manipulating the plot. On the negative side, she does not excel at character development. Her characters are stock characters. Still, a great story until the last 50 pages or so. That’s when the plot gets super-convoluted.

1/9/10