The New Policeman

by Kate Thompson

      J.J. and his family live on a farm outside the small Irish village of Kinvara.  Musicians all, the four family members struggle to keep up with everything in their lives.  There's never enough time to do it all--chores, school work, house work, fiddle-playing and dancing. It almost seems like the days get shorter and shorter all the time.  J.J.'s mom Helen has a birthday coming up.  All she wants is more time.  J.J. doesn't know how he's going to do it, but he's determined to get more time for his mom.  A chance meeting with a neighbor lady sends J.J. exploring the underground rooms of an ancient fort ruins, and there Anne Korff shows him the passageway into another world, the world of the faeries, where time is supposed to stand still.  Together they hope to discover where the time leak from one world to the other is, and plug up the hole.  The problem with traveling between the two worlds is that it's hard to remember why you've come once you cross over.  J.J. struggles to stay focused on his purpose of finding the time leak.  Meanwhile, the new policeman in Kinvara is really a faerie who entered from the faerie world to search for the leak from this side.  Only he just can't remember why he became a policeman.  Interwoven with ancient Irish legends and the traditional dance music of generations ago, this quiet and magical tale charms and seduces the reader and draws him back to a time in history when fairies and leprechans were as real as a next door neighbor.  A lovely story.

         ~reviewed by Mrs. Sams