Why do so many people drown in the river running through the Pacific Northwest town of Gray Star? Only a mermaid princess can answer that question, and she's been dead for 400 years. Deep in the dark forest, pre-teen Sappho Smith's dreamlife is haunted by strange beings, shimmering water, and silver clues. It's the mid-1970s, and young Sappho stands at the threshold of worlds. Mother Kate has followed her Californian lover on his treasure hunt and embraced the sweet hippie dream of going Back to the Land. That dream cracks up against the hard facts of life in the north woods-often with comic results. School life offers the allure of the cool kids. Sappho is caught between her peers' seductive pull and that of the beautiful spectre desperate to lift the centuries-old curse on her people. Can Sappho truly hear the ghostly mermaid and reveal the Siren's Secret at last?
