It is 1918 and Grace Pike is eleven. A precocious outcast at prestigious Victoria Street School in Harbour Grace, she is severely challenged as a young adult reader. A difficult year of studies is made worse when her mother, recent war widow, is faced with a proposition which could change the future of both the family and the town they call home.
But when Grace encounters town visiting children at the Fairy Ring, a magical cluster of trees on an abandoned farm, everything changes. Now a star student, Grace must contend with the jealousy and feverish smears of a community on the verge of irrevocable change, inflamed by the building of an aerodrome for the pioneer flight of the Handley Page Atlantic in 1919.
What if her family’s newfound circumstances are too good to be true, if she and her mother have somehow made a deal with the devil? Does life rest on such mysterious fortunes? And for families and communities does fortune favour the brave?