On a mountainside in Tennessee lies an abandoned quarry, flooded long ago by an underground river. There, in the gathering shadows of a winter twilight, something happened to nine-year-old Nan Lucas. Something that left her daredevil playmate, Tucker Wills, dead and young Nan's mind crippled, unable to recall the horror.

Now a trendy Manhattan fashion photographer, Nan Lucas returns to Tennessee twenty years later, seeking to recover from a collapsed marriage. In the old farmhouse inherited from her grandmother, she begins to reorder her priorities - among them, forming a more solid relationship with her young son, Stephen. Common sense tells her that the imaginary playmate who consumes so much of Stephen's time is only a normal invention for a little boy who has no companion his own age.

Yet Nan cannot ignore her mounting fears that the mysterious figure Stephen calls 'Woody' is both very real and very dangerous. Joining forces with an old mountain woman who is rumored to possess the gift of second sight, she struggles to save Stephen from the shadowy companion who seems to be compelling him toward destruction. Yet as hope and time runs out, Nan comes to realize that she must somehow pierce the veil of her forgotten past and reach into the dark recesses of her memory to rediscover what happened at the quarry, on the long-ago winter night that Tucker Wills died.

I must say that I absolutely loved this book. I thought that it was extremely scary - but it was the subtle, psychological type of horror that I really enjoy. Judith Hawkes is a new author to me, and My Soul to Keep is the first book of hers that I have read. I believe that Judith Hawkes has written at least two other books, and I have placed both of them on my Wish List. I give My Soul to Keep by Judith Hawkes an A+! ( )