The Glass Casket by McCormick Templeman (review)

The sleepy tranquility of Nag’s End is shattered when five of the king’s men are brutally killed in the local woods. The village elders initially insist that the attacks are animal in nature, but sixteen-year-old Rowan Rose and her friend Tom remain unconvinced, especially when the attacks start occurring within the village boundaries. The violence coincides with the arrival of several strangers: a breathtakingly beautiful girl, who is rumored to be Rowan’s cousin, and the king’s brother-in-law, who is presumably there to investigate the murders but who seems much more interested in Rowan’s ability to translate an old text. Nag’s End becomes a town under siege, paralyzed by its residents’ inability to grapple with an evil far beyond their imagining, and there’s a quiet stillness to the prose as Rowan and her friends essentially wait to discover who will be killed next. The cool aloofness of the folkloric narration manages to simultaneously mute the graphic horror of the attacks and ratchet up the tension as the situation escalates. Plot layers twist upon plot layers and the relationships among the characters prove increasingly complex: Tom, for example, is initially portrayed as the stalwart, steady best friend, but his romance with Rowan’s cousin and his subsequent devastation drive him to actions that endanger the whole town. The titular allusion to “Snow White” is accompanied by several other nods to classic fairy tales, and indeed, this has both the stylish beauty of those tales and the chilling darkness that makes them timeless.