In this dreamy novel, a young girl returns to her Irish home where she can finally embrace her innate sense of the Strange—fair folk and magical creatures that contain both beauty and darkness.

“An unforgettable tale . . . that contains all the darkness and light of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”—School Library Journal, starred review

“A haunting fable inflected with mythological and fairy-tale motifs.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Clare Macleod has lived all her life with an awareness of the Strange, tales of fairies and magic-making told to her by her mother who died years ago. No longer a child, Clare has learned to suppress the magic that haunted the corners of her life, to say the word “fairy” with the appropriate disbelief. But after years of living in America, Clare and her father return to Ireland, to the house Clare was born in—a house built into a hillside with an ancient tree for a wall.

For Clare, the house is not only full of memories of her mother, but of the Strange and a mysterious boy with raven-dark hair and of dreamlike nights filled with stars and magic. In this place, magic—both bright and dark—will not sit quietly in a corner.