Title: The Drowning Tree
Author: Carol Goodman
ISBN: 0345462122
Pages: 384
Genre: Mystery
Rating: ****

I'm a big fan of Carol Goodman. I love her books, the way they are ambiguous and spooky. They are always well written and thought-provoking, at once a piece of literature as well as a mystery. She has written five books - The Seduction of Water, The Lake of Dead Languages, The Drowning Tree, The Ghost Orchid, and The Sonnet Lover. I've read all of those except the third, so I decided it was high time to tackle The Drowning Tree.

Juno McKay has almost escaped the ghosts of her past. She has a beautiful daughter, Bea, and a thriving career restoring glass in a small business with her father. When her company is hired to restore a stained glass window at her alma mater, Penrose College, she accepts the commission hesitantly. She knows that returning to her college will drag out the skeletons in her closet, specifically the fact that her ex-husband Neil was committed to an institution after trying to kill her and her daughter fourteen years ago in a fit of insanity.

Juno makes an effort to attend her best friend Christine's lecture on the window at Penrose, where she makes some controversial statements regarding her opinion on the origin of the window design. They meet up later for coffee, and Christine seems troubled. She asks Juno some odd questions, including ones about Neil, and then departs, leaving Juno confused and concerned for Christine.

As the book unfolds, Juno finds herself trapped in the middle of two worlds; she begins to investigate Christine's allegations regarding the origin of the stained glass window's design. Specifically, was the school's founder, Augustus Penrose, everything they thought he was? Why did he have his wife's sister Clare committed (ironically, to the same institution that Neil was in)? Is the figure in the window Eugenie, as they all had assumed for year, or is it actually Clare? And what exactly was the relationship between the three? As Juno dives into her research, searching for the answers to these questions, she emerges with shocking answers and insights into herself and her own past.

I enjoyed The Drowning Tree. I can't say I enjoyed it any more or less than her other novels, but it was well written. I really liked her constant use of mythology throughout the book - it is nice to feel like you are learning something while reading fiction!

I didn't feel like the historical mystery itself was as compelling or shocking as those in her other books. While it was well written and interesting, it just didn't really compare. However, Juno's story was extremely engaging and I read on eagerly to discover what happened to her.

If you haven't read any Carol Goodman, I highly recommend it. She has a new book, The Night Villa, which is being released later this year.