The girl who would speak for the dead
(Book)

Expanded version of The tea house.

It is the summer of 1925: Emily Stewart and her brother, Michael, are thirteen-year-old twins - privileged, precocious, and wandering aimlessly around their famil's Philadelphia estate. Emily spends her days populating the solitary grounds with characters and creatures from her imagination, wondering about her father, who died in World War I, and his friends who seems to have an unusually close relationship with her mother. She is curious about the family portraits that look down on the quiet hallways of her home...especially one of her great aunt. Why did die so young? Michael keeps to himself, reading by the river, tormenting his best friend, and longing for mysteries like the one about to emerge from the family history, the neighborhood, and the ground beneth the twins' feet. One day Emily discovers an off physical talent - she can secretly crack a joint in her ankle so the sound seems to burst in midair from nowhere. In their garden tea house, Emily and Michael gather the neighborhood children to fool them with these "spirit knockings." But soon this game of contacting the dead creeps into a world of adults still reeling from World War I. When the twins find themselves dabbling in the uncertain territory of human grief and family secrets, their game spins wildly out of control.