The author and her heroine, Echo, have this in common: each has created a dream world—a peaceful place where people are good and treat each other with respect, where music can chase away the shadows of despair, where there are no cults, and no one dies at the hand of a gun-wielding lunatic. Or has there been a mistake in Echo’s careful planning? Sixteen-year-old Charity shows up wearing a winter coat and boots in the springtime, rain not able to make her wet. And what does Echo make of the Boss who comes to the café, surrounded by his minions, to weep every night at the end of her guitar performance? Echo realizes there are cracks in the system she dreamed into existence. Even her own life has a past she can’t recall, an assumed identity serving as protection from previous memories. It will take a year of sacrificial love and 258 pages to bring a peaceful solution to Snow City.

At the hand of an experienced author, mystery and fantasy meet together in this novel. Characters have been created in-depth with unique voices, each sharing insights with the heroine. The solving of Echo’s mystery in Snow City becomes a mutual effort—one the reader will gladly share. Fantasy is only as viable as the reality it reflects. Like many others in this age, Kathryns has grown tired of political or religious solutions. A utopian dream world seems better than the alternative of more tears, hate, and evil. The author, like her readers, is called to remember that sacrificial love was built into this world of ours at its inception. The mother-daughter love shared by Echo and Charity possibly represents for her the truest reality and offers redeeming power to save a dream world―and surely the real one, as well.

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