The Widow’s Walk

Barclay (More Than Words Can Say) turns in a lukewarm, clunky supernatural romance. Adam and Constance Canfield died simultaneously thousands of miles apart in 1840: she fell to her death from the widow’s walk of their Massachusetts house, Seaside, while he was lost at sea. In the present, Boston College architecture professor Garrett Richmond is intrigued by the story of the couple’s doomed love and drawn to renovate Seaside. Garrett approaches the project with a grounded enthusiasm that is quickly rocked by the appearance of what seems to be first a dream and then a ghost—of Constance Canfield. When Constance proves that she is more corporeal than a woman dead for over 150 years should be, Garrett’s life is shaken on multiple levels, while Constance grapples with the complexities of loving two men in two different times. Reliance on heavy-handed exposition (“What Constance did not know was that over the years...”), stilted sentences, and a predictable ending make this ghost story good only for a yawn. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff Literary Agency. (May)