Alice learns when she visits him for help that his only copy was stolen. In the apartment, Alice finds an envelope containing a title page for “Alice-Three-Times.”Īlice turns to an acquaintance from school, Ellery Finch, who is a “deep fan” of Althea’s book. When she arrives home from school, however, the apartment has a terrible smell, and Harold, Audrey, and Ella are gone. Thinking their bad luck is back, Alice determines to tell Ella the next day. Alice thinks she sees the redhaired man who kidnapped her in the coffee shop where she works he is reading Althea’s book and leaves quickly when Alice sees him. Ella soon marries Harold, a wealthy New Yorker she meets while waitressing a cocktail party, and she and Alice move into the fancy apartment where Harold and his daughter Audrey live.

This news prompts her to settle more permanently with Alice in Brooklyn. Another time Ella discovered Alice following Althea’s online fans in chat rooms and message boards Ella was very upset, and Alice decided to give up her interest Althea and the book altogether.Įlla receives a letter saying Althea is dead. Over the years Ella discouraged Alice’s fascination with the book once, Alice found a copy and began to read a story called “Alice-Three-Times,” but Ella took the book away. Once, when Alice was six, a redhaired man kidnapped her briefly, saying that he was taking her to see her grandmother, but Ella got Alice back safely. It acquired a following of fans and became impossible to purchase anywhere. Althea, a recluse, wrote one published book, Tales from the Hinterland.

Alice often daydreamed that her grandmother, Althea Proserpine, would invite them to come stay at her estate in upstate New York, the Hazel Wood. Bad luck drove them to crisscross the country. Alice and her mother, Ella, spent Alice’s childhood and teen years living as vagrants, moving frequently, staying in the spare rooms of Ella’s acquaintances. Alice Proserpine, 17, now lives in New York City in a luxurious apartment and attends an elite private school-but her life was very different until this year.

Books like the hazel wood