Tunes played by an enchantress

Frankie Burnaby is 12. She lives on a remote farm in British Columbia, where ‘the clear turbulent Thompson River joins the vaster opaque Fraser’. This novella, first published in 1947, charts the two conflicting emotional currents that, like the rivers of Frankie’s birthplace, struggle for dominance.

Any new arrival is exciting in this thinly populated neighbourhood, and when beautiful, mysterious Hetty Dorval moves in, she is the object of intense fascination. Mrs Dorval arrives for no discernible reason and with no immediately discernible husband, just a dour guardian called Mrs Broom, a dog called Sailor, and, it is whispered, an unsavoury past. She is a Jamesian character, tainted by the corruption of the Old World, aloof yet predatory. She lures Frankie with her charm and her sweet singing voice; there are dainty teas and verbal caresses, but to what end?