Fiona Sheridan had only been 17 when her older sister Deb had been murdered and dumped in a field outside of the defunct Idlewild School. That was 20 years ago, and Fiona still isn’t over it. Deb’s boyfriend at the time, Tim Christopher, had been convicted of the crime and served his prison sentence, but he always protested his innocence. Fiona never bought it. So the day Deb would have turned 40, Fiona finds herself once again on that creepy road outside of Idlewild, and that’s how she found out that someone had bought the school and was getting ready to refurbish it.
Back in 1950, the school had been a boarding school for wayward girls. Katie Winthrop had been a spirited kid, strong willed and stubborn and able to get other girls to follow her lead. Cecelia (Cece) Frank was the bastard daughter of a rich man, her mother a housekeeper. Roberta Greene had been a good kid until she saw her WWII veteran uncle try to commit suicide and stopped talking for several months due to the shock. And Sonia Gallipeau, a European refugee from the war, where her father had been placed in Dachau concentration camp.
At school, the girls had been there for each other, helping where they could and filling their time by reading a contraband copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and telling ghost stories of Mary Hand, who was rumored to be buried on the grounds and was seen on occasion by Idlewild girls. Through the decades, the students left notes to each other in their textbooks, telling of ghost sightings and helpful ideas to help them get through the boredom of their classes. But eventually the girls grew into women and moved on, and Idlewild closed.
But now, someone has bought the long abandoned school and started construction, trying to bring it back to life. However, the construction doesn’t get very far before they find the body of a girl buried in an old well on the school grounds. The tag of her sweater still has her name: Sonia Gallipeau. And just like that, Fiona and her journalist instincts are on her way to finding out what else happened on the grounds of Idlewild School.
Simone St. James’ The Broken Girls tells the story of Fiona in 2014, still haunted by her sister’s murder and trying to find the truth of what happened to her, while also trying to find out what exactly happened back in the 1950s that ended up with a beautiful young girl getting killed and hidden in a well. There is a supernatural aura to this novel, along with the investigation, and there are a lot of smart, determined women who aren’t afraid to do things on their own terms. I love that!
I listened to the audio book on this one, and narrator Rebecca Lowman really took me to Vermont, where I lived in the past and the present through the voices of these young women. I loved it, and I recommend the experience of The Broken Girls on audio!
Galleys for The Broken Girls were provided by Berkley through Edelweiss, with many thanks, but I bought the audio book myself through Audible.