Treasure Forest
Cat Bordhi
Ace, Apr 2006, $14.00, 304 pp.
ISBN: 0441013694

When the grandmother of Ben and Sara dies from a heart attack, the children wonder if they will ever be able to play in the woods again that adjoined Daphne's home. Their mother Lily hates the woods, and left home as soon as she could, never to return, and only reluctantly sending her children to visit their grandma. Daphne leaves her home to Lily asking her daughter to live there for one year. Hesitantly Lily agrees with the stipulation, but also arranges for someone to watch over Ben and Sara when they enter the woods.

The children absorbed the Zen-like teachings of their grandmother and feel connected to the woods and each other. Ben receives a letter from his grandmother at the time the will was read; she asks him to figure how to find a treasure at the bottom of a pond without moving the water. Sara was advised to heed the teachings of Daphne's mentor Esther. When Sara disappears with Esther to a place no one else can go, searchers seek the missing child, but only Ben connected to his sibling can find her, if he can solve his grandmother's riddle.

Even before the family moves into grandma's house, magical occurrences happen, and the woods seem filled with an essence of an otherworldly mysticism setting, and a fascinating atmosphere within a mundane world. The entire family learns from Sara's disappearance, especially the young girl who seems destined to fill her grandmother's legacy. Cat Bordhi has written a somewhat different thought-provoking fantasy that magically charms her readers into needing to know what comes next.