Plague in the Mirror

by Deborah Noyes

Overview

In a sensual paranormal romance, a teen girl’s doppelgänger from 1348 Florence lures her into the past in hopes of exacting a deadly trade.

It was meant to be a diversion — a summer in Florence with her best friend, Liam, and his travel-writer mom, doing historical research between breaks for gelato. A chance to forget that back in Vermont, May’s parents, and all semblance of safety, were breaking up. But when May wakes one night sensing someone in her room, only to find her ghostly twin staring back at her, normalcy becomes a distant memory. And when later she follows the menacing Cristofana through a portale to fourteenth-century Florence, May never expects to find safety in the eyes of Marco, a soulful painter who awakens in her a burning desire and makes her feel truly seen. The wily Cristofana wants nothing less of May than to inhabit each other’s lives, but with the Black Death ravaging Old Florence, can May’s longing for Marco’s touch be anything but madness? Lush with atmosphere both passionate and eerie, this evocative tale follows a girl on the brink of womanhood as she dares to transcend the familiar — and discovers her sensual power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763663568
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	06/11/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	993 KB
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Deborah Noyes is the author of The Ghosts of Kerfol and the editor of the anthologies The Restless Dead and Gothic! She is also the author of Red Butterfly, illustrated by Sophie Blackall, and Hana in the Time of the Tulips, illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Deborah Noyes lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

I first knew I wanted to be a writer at an early age—probably sometime in grade school, after I realized I couldn’t be Jane Goodall. We moved a lot when I was a kid. Changing neighborhoods and schools was a challenge, but a nomadic life suited me. The rangier education appealed to my curiosity and sense of adventure. While school knowledge often fit together like a puzzle of mismatched pieces, I learned to pursue my own interests, reading greedily on my own: historical fiction with its solid (exotic, to me!) sense of place and time; fairy and weird tales; folklore, myths, and legends; books about animals and animal behavior; ghost stories.

I still read all that, together with histories of subjects I get sporadically obsessed with: silk, tulips, honey, death, royalty, feral children, the circus . . . but I live a reasonably settled life in Massachusetts with my family. When we became parents (of Clyde and, later, Michaela), we wanted our kids to have secure roots. But I travel whenever I can and rarely write at home, roaming instead with my laptop from coffee shop to coffee shop. On days when I’m content to work in my apartment, I enjoy a bottomless pot of tea and the company of a Jack Russell terrier named Molly or our cranky marmalade cat, Moe (never both at once in the same room: Moe won’t hear of it).


My restless early life set the stage for the kind of writer I am today. I’ve been lucky to publish a wide range of books—from picture books and creative nonfiction to young adult and adult historical fiction—and to work as an editor/anthologist and photographer. Photography started as a hobby, but I have a funny habit of corralling my hobbies into my work so I have the excuse to play more. Animals are my favorite photographic subjects and turn up all the time in my writing too. In The Ghosts of Kerfol, they even haunt a house. . . .

Three Things You Might Not Know About Me:

1. I was a zookeeper for a year, taking care of snow monkeys, an anaconda, and Madagascar hissing cockroaches, among others. I’m the only person I know who’s been bitten by a dwarf lemur.

2. When I traveled to Namibia for African Acrostics, I swaddled myself in camouflage and climbed trees to spy on zebras and warthogs—or crouched for hours in fiberglass blinds near waterholes. My favorite blind was shaped like a giant termite mound, and when I was inside doing my vigil one hot day, a tick, one that causes a particularly nasty kind of fever, bit me on the toe. We were hundreds of miles from the nearest doctor, but luckily my hosts had old antibiotics on hand.

3. I regret that I never learned to play a musical instrument, so am teaching myself to play piano. But my memory isn’t what it used to be, and I can’t keep the notes straight!

Editorial Reviews

Back home in Vermont, May's parents are splitting up and waiting for her to decide where she'll spend her last year of high school. Here in Florence, she should be eating gelato, hanging out with her old friend Liam, and helping his travel writer mother research her next book. But what's meant to be a pleasant distraction gets complicated when Cristofana, May's ghostly double, comes to visit. Cristofana has created a portal between her world—Florence during the plague years—and May's. What does she want? A trade: her world for May's. There's no reason for May to say yes, except—as canny, willful Cristofana knows—in May's first brief foray into old Florence, she fell under the spell of a handsome artist. Noyes (The Ghosts of Kerfol) has hold of a rich and haunting premise, but as May and Cristofana argue about what will or won't happen, the book starts to feel like all concept with little payoff. The problem is compounded by the fact that Cristofana—old before her time, with a complicated family and witchlike powers—is much more interesting than the under-characterized May. Ages 14–up. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Noyes creates an eerie mood and limns a hauntingly vivid landscape; against this rich backdrop, her characters explore and test the bounds of their identities and their relationships.
—The Horn Book

[A] rich and haunting premise.
—Publishers Weekly

Noyes portrays life in the Middle Ages and the realities of the Black Death in rich detail... Elements of romance, history, and horror could appeal to a wide range of readers...
—Booklist Online

Dark, deceptive, seductive, and haunting, Deborah Noyes' Plague in the Mirror is a novel rich in history.
—El Paso Times

From the Publisher

Gr 9 Up—The summer before May's senior year, she goes to Florence with a friend of her mother's and her son, May's childhood best friend. May's parents are getting a divorce, and she needs to decide which one she will stay with once she returns. Liam, whom she has always thought of as a kind of brother, is showing signs that his feelings for her are far warmer than she's prepared to deal with. To compound her confusion, a haunting figure appears at the foot of her bed during the night. Her ghostlike twin has come to lure her into a desperate trade: May will go to 14th-century Florence, while she, Cristofana, takes her place in a world free of the plague. May visits ancient Florence with Cristofana and becomes obsessed with a handsome young artist named Marco. Will her passion lead her to choose what is clearly the more dangerous option? Although the premise should make Noyes's first YA novel an absorbing read, the dissonance that May experiences is the same that readers encounter while attempting to put a picture together of what this book is trying to be. Is it historical fiction? A horror story? A romance? A book can certainly be all three, but in this title, the history lessons are too forced, the horror is too unbelievable, and the romance so nonsensical that readers will be frustrated.—Kathy Kirchoefer, Henderson County Public Library, NC

School Library Journal

May's trip to Florence with family friends takes a frightening turn when she wakes in the middle of the night to find her ghostly twin standing at the foot of her bed. Determined to forget her parents' divorce and their request that she decide with whom to spend her senior year of high school, May travels with her childhood friend, Liam, and his travel-writer mother, Gwen. But her study of history becomes supernatural when her ethereal doppelganger appears, inviting her back in time. May becomes a ghostly version of herself as Cristofana leads her through a time portal into the middle of the Black Death. However, when Cristofana slips back into the future, May is left very human and very vulnerable in the past. Clever and dangerous, Cristofana lures May away from her life using Marco, a handsome artist. Historical details, opulent settings and awakening passions paint a rich landscape. The gritty reality of pre-Renaissance life comes alive set against the relative ease of modern times. Unfortunately, the setting is the star, overshadowing the characters. Noyes' story lacks mystery and dread, becoming more a study of the Middle Ages than an evocative ghost story. An informative tale, but it lacks spark. (Ghost story. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews