Pamela Dean's The Secret Country and Authorial Creation by Eve Sweetser

   

When I first read Pamela Dean's Secret Country trilogy, I was struck by her creativity in using familiar themes in radically unfamiliar ways. I was amused and interested as her protagonists gradually figured out the complex relationship between their world and the Secret Country, a world they thought they had "made up" in a game (the actual Secret Country is also sometimes ritually called the Hidden Land). But then — after many a plot twist! — Dean came round and hit me a double whammy at the end, arranging for half of her protagonist families' members to emigrate permanently to the Secret Country, while the other half stay behind in our world. Ruth, Ted, and Laura Carroll, with Ted and Laura's parents, choose the Secret Country; Patrick and Ellen Carroll (along with the parents of Ruth, Patrick and Ellen) stay here. And everyone copes with this decision. There's a major surface anomaly here....  More>>>