Spirit Lost

Handsome, sensitive and talented, blessed with a good marriage and good friends, Willy Constable and her husband John seem to live a charmed existence. They know their move from an apartment in Boston to a Victorian house on Nantucket will require adjustments, but both expect their willingness to work hardhe on his paintings; she on her needlework; both on their relationshipwill be immensely rewarding, even if John's career as an artist doesn't take off. But the apparition of a beautiful young woman severely disturbs their equanimity. Once the owner of their house, the woman appears only to John, and he quickly becomes obsessed with her. The ways in which Willy and John struggle to understand the ghostif indeed she is a spirit and not a figment of John's mindand cope with the devastation she wreaks on their relationship is the substance of this carefully wrought and quite credible ghost story. Thayer is the author of Stepping and Nell. (August)