Riverland, by Fran Wilder

Riverland, by Fran Wilder (Abrams, April 2019), starts with magic that isn't actually magic at all.  Eleanor and her little sister, Mike, know that when things are destroyed or lost in their house, it's because rules have been broken.  And they know that if they try harder to follow the rules, the house magic will repair everything.  The most important rule is not to talk about the house magic to anyone.   But Mike has just broken that rule, and now Eleanor's one good friend, Pendra, wants to know more about the magic.  And so she pressures Eleanor to let her visit after school, breaking even more rules....

There is no house magic.  There are only rules made to try to placate an angry, physically and verbally abusive father, a mother trying to pretend that everything can be just fine, and the two sisters, increasingly unable to cope as the "house magic" fails.

There is real magic, though, and it's found it's way into Eleanor and Mike's home.  Their hiding place under Eleanor's bed becomes a river, and when they plunge into the water, they are in a another world.  The Riverland is not a safe place either, though; it's no happy fairyland.  It's a place under attack from the snake-headed woman leading the nightmares that spawn there in an effort to break into our world, and the cracks between the worlds are growing.

The sisters learn that their family had helped the Riverland stay balanced in the past, but for Eleanor, the burden of trying to help, without knowing what she can do about anything, is too much, and she and Mike retreat back to the real world.  It's only until the rivers, and the nightmares, have almost broken through that she is able to help.  But what help is there for her own family?

The story is strongest when it tells of the real world; the portrayal of Eleanor and Mike's circumstances is heartbreaking and believable.  In particular, Eleanor's growing fear that she might, in her own anger, be following in her father's footsteps is powerful and moving.  Happily, though the girls keep the rule about not talking about their family to anyone outside it, help does come as their grandmother becomes part of their lives.  I loved the details of the real world--the glass project that Eleanor and Pendra work on, for instance, is now my favorite fictional science project ever (it is both delightful sciency and delightfully metaphory!).

The fantasy element took some time for me to accept it.  The Riverland is not well explained. The reader just to accept the strangely fabricated guardian birds fighting back the nightmares, the antagonist snake woman, and the stranded travelers from our world who, in armored carapaces, work to repair the breaks and keep the nightmares contained, without having the logic of it spelled out.  It's more dreamlike than I myself tend to like, more an allegory than a self-contained alternate reality.  Possibly I wasn't as engaged with it as I'd have liked is because the visits the girls make there don't last very long; possibly if I hadn't been so much more interested in the real world story I've had read the fantasy part more slowly and carefully, and gotten more out of it.  That being said, at the end of the sisters' last journey, the Riverland comes together with their real world story beautifully, giving them catharsis, acceptance of their story, and the possibility of making a new one for themselves.

Sort answer--though not a personal favorite for me in particular (I just couldn't suspend my disbelief quite enough for the Riverland part), it sure is memorable and powerful.  Though perhaps not one you'd immediately think to give kids wanting unicorns and rainbow escapism, it's one to give them anyway.