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by Annelise Makin (Author)
1974. Katrina, a stormy teenager in an ancient Bavarian village, plunges herself into love adventures and ends up seeing ghosts.
Ghosts belong to the natural occurrences in the village. The heart of the community, St. George's Chapel hill, has seen a dragon, a witch, and a hell hound. No wonder, the hill was once a Celtic sanctuary, the building blocks of which rest in the chapel foundation. The newest ghost is the Celtic stallion. Sightings had been reported ever since a white horse got trapped in the chapel and starved to death. Katrina writes all these stories that she has grown up with--plus she adds her own imagination. Mara, a Celtic princess, whispers stories in her ear. Yes, there was a metaverse before the computer age.
Katrina, an 11th grade high school student, has a lot of imagination. She types up her stories like mad in the hen house, while her grandfather outside peens away at his scythes. Yet Katrina fails each essay in the History Marathon until she plagiarizes her dead grandmother's diary. All hell breaks loose over her revelations after this gets printed in the newspaper-but her essays and grades improve. Not much later, another sensation excites the village: a 2000-year-old Celtic princess is unearthed. The archeological find is discovered in Mike's house during a renovation project. Mike, by now almost done with his carpenter training, is Katrina's secrete love interest. However, he plays hard to catch. Finally, during the St. John's fire, Katrina and Mike get to make out in the forest, although interrupted. The village Bully, Beni, exposes their hanky-panky. Katrina flees off into the night, only to discover that her best friend Luise had lied to her as well. Luise didn't go to the disco, as she claimed: she is participating in a Celtic rite on solstice day. Katrina breaks off their friendship.
All along, the mute grandfather, who has never processed a bitter strike of fate, observes his grand-daughter's comings and goings. He worries that Katrina mingles with the riff raff. He hammers on his scythes while Katrina clinks away in the henhouse. Gramp's worst fears come true: Katrina eventually is blamed by her father for a conspiracy in a church robbery. Many votives and two saints in St. George's Chapel are stolen. Gramps decides he must help that girl! As Katrina writes her stories, many ghosts canter around St. George's Chapel. And the Celtic stallion soon becomes all too real. Another surprising find delivers the proof for the Celtic presence.
In Katrina's multi-layered world, the long-deceased grandmother speaks from the Otherworld through all the happenings. Grandmother Kathl was a sage. Proof for her special talent of foreseeing the future is a very remarkable votive she painted. And the clues to many fates speak from Kathl's diary. The good old days weren't so good after all.
