“Henry, Kansas, is a hot town. And a cold town. It is a town so still there are times when you can hear a fly trying to get through the window of the locked-up antique store on Main Street. Nobody remembers who owns the antique store, but if you press your face against the glass, like the fly, you’ll see that whoever they are, they don’t have much beyond a wide variety of wagon wheels. Yes, Henry is a still town. But there have been tornadoes on Main Street. If the wind blows, it’s like it won’t ever stop. Once it’s stopped, there seems to be no hope of getting it started again.”

In keeping with the classic openings of famous magical-adventure books, the novel’s first paragraph describes a small town so boring and bereft of life that the hero will have to search for something interesting with which to engage. Still, the description of the town captures details, down to a fly on a window, that invite readers to look around and observe carefully, lest they miss the hidden wonders just under the surface.

“A population of dolls was scattered throughout the room. Some, china-skinned and delicate, stood in a line across the top of the dresser, each propped up by its own metal stand. A few others, with floppy limbs and stitched features, sprawled on beds, and one, a plastic child, lay on its side looking at Henry. One of its eyes was shut. A little creepy, Henry thought.”

Henry’s three cousins share a bedroom on the second floor, just down the hall from the mysterious Grandfather’s room. Penelope, the oldest, is more serene, but the two younger girls are lively and full of play and mischief; the dolls represent their spirit, and something else—perhaps a sense of magic. In fantasy and horror stories, dolls often foretell strange and sometimes dangerous events to come.

“Henry had never heard of such a thing as a forgotten door. Back at school, he never would have believed such things existed. But here was different. There was something strange about here.”

A house in the middle of nowhere, three lively sisters with interesting parents, knobs twisting in the bedroom wall, something weird that happened that Henry can’t quite recall: It’s a very different place from his restricted life back in Boston. He must, all at once, wrap his head around his parents’ disappearance, life in an entirely new place, and eerie things hidden in his bedroom wall.