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An Avenue of Stars
The Folk Keeper
by Franny Billingsley
Aladdin Paperbacks edition, 2001, 162 pages
Corinna Stonewall is a Folk Keeper. From her post in the cellar of the foundling home in which she lives, Corinna uses traditional methods and her own considerable strength of will to keep the Folk at bay. Without a Folk Keeper, the mysterious and unseen Folk will wreak havoc on crops and livestock. It is a responsibility about which Corinna is deadly serious as she tells her story of adventure and self-discovery.
Corinna’s already-complex circumstances are further complicated by the fact that she is disguised as a boy, knows nothing of her family of origin, and has secrets and powers she can barely begin to comprehend. At fifteen, she stands at a threshold in her life when she agrees to leave the foundling home to serve as Folk Keeper at Marblehaugh Park, a seaside estate owned by a wealthy family that seems, curiously, to have sought her out.
In leaving the mainland to go to the island manor, Corinna encounters mystery after mystery. Who is Lady Rona, whose name is scratched numerous times on the walls of the passages beneath the manor? Who is the unnamed infant buried in unhallowed ground near the estate’s graveyard? Something is up at Marblehaugh Park, but it has little to do with the Folk and much to do with Corinna’s true identity.
“Imagine a world without shadows,” Corinna writes at one point. “You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.” The Folk Keeper is rich with shadows and lore and Corinna’s hard-earned wisdom. Facing her adversary, she asks a question that reveals too much: “I bit down on my lip, but too late, the question was out. Corinna, never again let your enemy know what might be precious to you!” As her personal origin becomes known to her, Corinna begins to see the world anew: “For four years I have been wearing blinders. I thought all this time I walked a path of cobblestones, and it turns out to have been an avenue of stars!”
The mystery of Corinna’s identity is revealed through circumstances that might have come from a Dickens novel, intertwined with lore of the Folk, lore of the Seal People, and the power of language to overcome evil. It is the power of language that finally compels Corinna to forego her presumed destiny and choose a path that will open to her more than one world.
Using a first-person narrative in the form of Corinna’s Folk Record, a journal of sorts kept by Folk Keepers, author Franny Billingsley gives strong evidence of language’s power. The Folk Keeper is richly imagined, with vivid characters and heart-pounding intrigue. Corinna’s discovery of her true self, though, is the central, breath-taking event of the story, the import of which teen readers will grasp with ease.
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