Mary Downing Hahn has done it again! She knows how to tell a bone chilling story and keep the reader on the edge of their seat.

This old Virginia house, Oak Hill, was built in 1786, but has not been lived in since 1885. Shortly after that is when the ghost story began. Now Jules’ father, who specializes in restoring historic houses, begins his work on the house while they live in a much newer side-wing. Jules does not know it yet, but the family who owned Oak Hill, in the 1880s, was murdered here. What Jules does know, or thinks she knows, is that she has seen someone upstairs in the third floor window.

Back and forth between Jules on the ground and Lily on the third floor the story is woven with bits and pieces of Lily’s memories which are slowly coming back to her. Lily has been locked in that third floor room since her mother told her not to come out. That was the night in 1885, when the robbers on horseback rode up to the house and took her parents away.

Jules and Lily are somehow connected as Lily watches Jules from the safety of her locked room. Jules at times can see Lily’s past life as though it is currently happening. Eventually, Jules and Lily will meet and talk.

Jules meets a girl, Massie, at the public library while doing research on the house and its former occupants. They become friends and Jules invites Massie over to the house for a sleepover. Then Massie and Jules help Lily leave her room because the workers restoring the house will be on the third floor in the morning. A surreal alternate world collides between the past and the present as Lily leaves her room after so many years. An alternate world and Lily’s history changes.