Book Jacket from By These Ten Bones
By Clare B. Dunkle. New York: Henry Holt, 2005. 229 p.

“There’s hidden places all over this land—old, old places. Places with a chain to them for to chain up the wolf when it’s time.”

“Your shadow,” Maddie stammered, pointing to the ground behind him. “It moved. Moved by itself. I saw it.”

The carver turned to look, and she looked, too. His shadow was exactly like hers, thin and gray in the overcast evening. Maddie blushed hotly, waiting for him to laugh at her.

But the young man didn’t laugh. He just watched his shadow for a minute. When he straightened up and faced her again, his green eyes were wary.

“Are you going to tell the others?” he wanted to know.

A mysterious young man has come to a small Highland town. His talent for wood carving soon wins him work at the castle and the admiration of the weaver’s daughter Maddie. Fascinated by the silent carver, she sets out to gain his trust, only to find herself drawn into a terrifying secret that threatens everything she loves.

There is an evil presence in the woodcarver’s life that cannot be controlled, and Maddie watches her town fall under a shadow. One by one, people begin to die. Caught in the middle, Maddie must decide what matters most to her—and what price she is willing to pay to keep it.