Faces in the Water (York Trilogy) [Library Binding]

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1981 | Series: York Trilogy

During Daniel's summer visit with his grandmother in York County, Pennsylvania, characters and events from his visit to York, England, appear and reappear in mysterious ways. Sequel to Shadows on the Wall.

Product Details

• Library Binding: 167 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum; 1st edition (March 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068930823X
• ISBN-13: 978-0689308239
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,133,955 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I guess I've been writing for about as long as I can remember. Telling stories, anyway, if not writing them down. I had my first short story published when I was sixteen, and wrote stories to help put myself through college, planning to become a clinical psychologist. By the time I graduated with a BA degree, however, I decided that writing was really my first love, so I gave up plans for graduate school and began writing full time.

I'm not happy unless I spend some time writing every day. It's as though pressure builds up inside me, and writing even a little helps to release it. On a hard-writing day, I write about six hours. Tending to other writing business, answering mail, and just thinking about a book takes another four hours. I spend from three months to a year on a children's book, depending on how well I know the characters before I begin and how much research I need to do. A novel for adults, because it's longer, takes a year or more. When my work is going well, I wake early in the mornings, hoping it's time to get up. When the writing is hard and the words are flat, I'm not very pleasant to be around.

Getting an idea for a book is the easy part. Keeping other ideas away while I'm working on one story is what's difficult. My books are based on things that have happened to me, things I have heard or read about, all mixed up with imaginings. The best part about writing is the moment a character comes alive on paper, or when a place that existed only in my head becomes real. There are no bands playing at this moment, no audience applauding--a very solitary time, actually--but it's what I like most. I've now had more than 120 books published, and about 2000 short stories, articles and poems.

I live in Bethesda, Maryland, with my husband, Rex, a speech pathologist, who's the first person to read my manuscripts when they're finished. Our sons, Jeff and Michael, are grown now, but along with their wives and children, we often enjoy vacations together in the mountains or at the ocean. When I'm not writing, I like to hike, swim, play the piano and attend the theater.

I'm lucky to have my family, because they have contributed a great deal to my books. But I'm also lucky to have the troop of noisy, chattering characters who travel with me inside my head. As long as they are poking, prodding, demanding a place in a book, I have things to do and stories to tell.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The haunting continues, June 19, 2002

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Faces in the Water (York Trilogy) (Paperback)

The haunting York trilogy continues in "Faces in the Water," picking up the threads that the first book left dangling, and weaves them expertly into further complexity.

Dan has returned from York with some haunting memories of the odd gypsy family of Ambrose Faw, visions of Romans and Picts, and the discovery of a hereditary family disease. Now he's determined to leave the unusual vacation behind him, and spend some time with his kindly grandmother Blossom. But his time in York keeps intruding on the present.

His grandmother has hired a migrant worker named Lonnie, who reminds Dan of one of the gypsies from York. A letter comes from Joe, saying that the Faw family wants the silver denarius that was given to Dan at the end of the first book. Blossom makes some cryptic comments about Huntington's disease being an "evil" handed down through the family. And when Dan goes into the basement, where a stream runs through, he sees the face of Ambrose Faw watching him from the water.

When a magpie begins following him, Dan captures the bird and later sets it free. He is swept back in time over a thousand years, to York in the declining years of the Roman Empire, where he encounters an ancient parallel to the Faw family. How does this connect to the present, and how can he help the beautiful gypsy Orlenda?

The plot picks up the pace in "Faces," as some of the puzzles of "Shadows" are solved, but produce more questions as they are solved. For example, we see why Dan saw Jaspar as a wild man; but why does he see the Faw family sixteen hundred years in the past? What is the connection between these events and Huntington's disease? Or the connection between Blossom and the Faws? And what is up with those magpies?

Naylor's atmospheric writing is still present, with the nuanced dialogue and intricate characterizations of the first book. Not everyone is revealed on the outside, and that adds an aura of mystery to all the characters except Dan, who is our window to the events of the book. And though time travel is a well-worn cliche, Naylor manages to make it feel fresh and intriguing. It's virtually impossible to predict what is ahead for the characters or the plotline, and that's a delightful change from the usual ghost stories.

Undoubtedly "Footsteps at the Window" will be as good as "Shadows" and "Faces," as the second book leaves the readers waiting for the answers to its many questions. Excellent fantasy story for kids and adults alike.

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthy second volume in the York Trilogy, October 24, 2011

By 

Pop Bop (Denver, Colorado United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faces in the Water (York Trilogy) (Paperback)

This is the second volume in the York Trilogy; it answers some questions from Book one, leaves open new questions, and moves the overall story arc along very well. In fact, unlike the case with most second books, I like this one a little more than the first.

That said, the York Trilogyis probably for slightly older readers than the 9 years set out in the description. That's not because of language or violence, (or scariness), but because the plot involves a fair amount of time travel and multiple characters who appear and reappear in slightly different guises during the course of the travel. It's not simple time travel, where the hero touches something or goes through a doorway and clearly ends up somewhere else. Rather, time periods and locations overlap, so that our hero may be in the here and now, but ghostly roman legions march by him, while the girl from then in her form as the girl from now is talking to him. You get the idea.

While it's not essential, it is a lot easier to follow the trilogy if the books are read in the right order, since each book is sort of a standalone, but themes, characters and plot points are developed over the course of the three books, and for the conclusion to be really satisfying I think you'd have to be familiar with the earlier books.

So, not your usual middle grade fantasy/ghost fare, but worth a look.