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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 village community like St. George's Chapel on the hill, which once was a Celtic sanctuary. The hill has seen several ghosts, among them a witch, a hound, and a dragon. The newest one, a white horse, got trapped in the chapel 200 years ago and starved to death.
Katrina, an 11th grade high school student, has grown up with all the stories--plus she adds her own imagination. Mara, a Celtic princess, also whispers stories in her ear. But the material turns out lousy for her essay marathon in school.
As Katrina madly types up her homework in the old hen house, her grandfather outside peens away at his scythes. Not surprisingly, Katrina fails each essay in the Marathon until she plagiarizes her dead grandmother's diary. All hell breaks loose when her piece of long forgotten misdeeds 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 in Mike's house during a renovation project. That stirs up even more an uproar in connection with her story.
Mike, by now almost done with his carpenter training, is Katrina's 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 exposes their hanky-panky. Katrina flees off into the night, only to discover that her best friend Louise had lied to her as well. Instead of going to a disco, her friend participates in a Celtic rite on solstice day. Katrina breaks off their friendship.
All along, the mute grandfather, who has never healed from a bitter strike of fate, observes his grand-daughter's troubles. 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 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.
