Sparrow Hill Road

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**Sparrow Hill Road** is the first novel in the Ghost Roads series by Seanan McGuire. It is a revised and expanded anthology of twelve short stories originally published in 2010 by The Edge of Propinquity.

*You may be looking for the song about Rose, Sparrow Hill Road (song).*

## Synopsis

Welcome to the midnight America, the place where people go when they slip into the cracks between light and darkness, a world of routewitches and oracles, demons and ambulomancers. It's the place where a man named Bobby Cross sold his soul to live forever...and where one pretty little dead girl is racing to save herself and stop the killings that began on Sparrow Hill Road. The rules are different here, and everyone's playing for keeps. Be careful. Be cautious. And listen to the urban legends, because they may be the only things that can save you from the man who waits at the crossroads, hunting souls to keep himself alive.

Welcome to the ghostroads.

*Sparrow Hill Road* (May 2014, DAW) is the story of Rose Marshall, who was the first victim of the man called Bobby Cross, although she was far from the last—and unlike most of them, she did not go easy into that good night. Sixty years down the line, she's still kicking ass, taking names, and more than a little bit pissed off about the way that she died. You want a good little ghost who'll stay where she's put and only haunt the people who deserve it? Go to a sleepover. You want the real story of the American ghostroads? Come and have a word with Rose.

## Plot

### The Dead Girl in the Diner

**1973:** Rose convinces trucker Larry Vibber to give her a meal and a ride. They get into a fatal, unavoidable crash, and Rose escorts Larry's ghost to the Last Dance Diner before he realizes he has died.

### Three Rescues and a Funeral

**1956:** Rose is drawn to a cornfield in Madison, Wisconsin, where she reunites a lost little girl named Amy with her parents.

**1958:** Rose returns to Madison, where she breaks Amy's fall from a malfunctioning carnival ride and saves her life again.

**1965:** Amy has run away from home. This time Rose is honest about her ghostly identity, and Amy remembers her from their previous encounters. Amy is upset that her parents disapprove of her boyfriend. Rose, sensing Bobby Cross nearing, drags Amy to a nearby diner. She convinces Amy to return home and fight to be with Will, and to stay in the diner until it is safe. Rose runs, leading Bobby away from Amy, and meets Amy's family bean sidhe, Emma.

**2008:** After an adult Amy is killed by a drunk driver, Rose escorts her to the Last Dance Diner to be reunited with Will, who had died two years previously.

### Hitchers and Homecomers

**1998:** Rose is drawn to a school bus crash that killed the majority of the passengers involved. She encounters Mackenzie, a cheerleader who hasn't yet realized she is dead. Rose realizes Mackenzie will become a homecomer if not helped through the transition. She convinces Mackenzie to move on to the afterlife.

### Bullets and Bad Coffee

**2010:** A driver, Josh, drops Rose off at the Starbright Diner. She has helped him avoid a huge pileup through several shortcuts, and he does not realize she's saved his life.

The diner feels different on this visit, and Rose enters to find a man holding everyone by gunpoint. She realizes he is a ghost, so she brashly tests his limits until she figures out that he is a strigoi who doesn't even understand that he died decades ago. She helps him come to terms with his and his girlfriend's deaths, but not without several casualties among the diners and staff. Rose leads all the dead to the Last Dance.

### True Love Dies Like Everything Else

**1992:** Rose tries to convince Tommy not to race his car for money, sensing that it will lead to his death. Tommy, desperate to get out of Jackson, Maine, races anyway. When he is killed, Rose is there to lead him into the twilight where he plans to wait for his girlfriend Laura.

**2012:** Laura has grown up and become a professor of folklore. She has devoted her entire career to tracking down the Phantom Prom Date: Rose, who she'd seen with Tommy the night he died. Laura summons Rose to a falsely-made diner and traps her in a Seal of Solomon, then tortures Rose as payback for supposedly killing Tommy. Tommy himself arrives to rescue Rose and assures Laura that Rose is his friend in all this.

### The Pretty Little Girl in the Green Silk Gown

**2013:** When the power goes out at the Last Dance, Emma convinces Rose to tell her true ghost story to a group of high school girls. Only once the story is done does Rose realize she's been talking to the Valkyries, and they approve of her.

**1952:** On the day she dies, Rose is getting ready to go to prom with her boyfriend, Gary Daniels. Gary is late picking her up, so Rose borrows her brother's car to drive herself. While on Sparrow Hill Road, a driver runs her off the road and she dies in the crash. She doesn't realize it, though, and wanders down the road until Gary finds her and gives her his coat. They skip prom and head to the local makeout point to have sex for the first time, then Gary drops her off at home. When he arrives home himself, the police are there to say that Rose was found dead hours ago.

### The Ocean Lady

**2013:** With Bobby Cross still hunting her, Rose makes a pilgrimage to the Ocean Lady, the power center of the routewitches. She appeals to the Queen of Routewitches who arranges for Rose to receive a tattoo for protection.

### The Devil in the Wind

**1955:** Three years after her death, Rose is desperate to fall off Bobby Cross's radar.

**2013:** While hitchhiking in Georgia, Rose realizes that Bobby Cross is hot on her trail. She tries to divert the driver to a rest stop, but they are hit before she can avoid it. Bobby finds them before Rose can convince the new ghost to go into the twilight. He tries to kiss her, and is disgusted to feel the effects of Persephone's tattoo.

### Prom Night Sweethearts

**2013:** Rose learns her new tattoo puts her under Persephone's protection, safe from Bobby Cross.

**2014:** Rose loses nearly a year to the twilight as her body adjusts to the tattoo. She comes back to awareness in the midst of prom season, and hitches a ride home to Buckley Township, Michigan. She is greeted by her great-niece Bethany, who invents an emergency to get Rose to come to the school gym. There, Bethany and her friends trap Rose in a Seal of Solomon with the intent to offer Rose up to Bobby Cross. Rose escapes, leaving Bethany at Bobby's mercy.

### Do You Believe in Ghosts?

**2014:** Rose encounters a group of ghost-hunting college students supported by Laura Moorhead, Tommy's old girlfriend now grown up. She pretends to be human and joins them, secretly releasing what ghosts they do manage to catch in their spirit jars and traps. One such creature drawn to them is a Maggy Dhu. Rose manages to capture it in a spirit jar, then orders the students to stop amateur ghost hunting. She reveals her own identity to them in the process.

### The Killing of Route 14

**1981:** Daly, Maine. Mary introduces herself to Rose and asks for her help in exorcising a haunted highway.

**2014:** Mary Dunlavy seeks Rose out. She reveals that she is the one who brokered Bobby Cross's deal with the crossroads and indirectly led to Rose's death and afterlife. She begs Rose's forgiveness, explaining that she was a new ghost and didn't know how to do her job properly yet.

### Crossroads Bargains

**2015**: Apple, Queen of the Routewitches, summons Rose and orders her to pay up for the protection of Persephone. The price is taking Bethany to the crossroads, as she has been harassed by Bobby Cross ever since she failed to offer Rose up as a sacrifice. Bethany makes a deal with the entity and becomes a crossroads ghost.

### True Love Never Dies

**2015:** Rose is drawn back to Buckley to play psychopomp for Gary Daniels himself, who is quietly passing away in a senior facility. Before he dies Gary gives her instructions to go to a particular routewitch mechanic. The mechanic crushes a car and its keys in front of Rose, then prompts her to go into the twilight where she find Gary has melded with the car. He had spent most of his life finding a loophole to allow him to ride the ghostroads and reunite with Rose after death.

### Thunder Road

**2015:** Rose and Gary, who is still a car, arrive at the Last Dance to find it has become the "Last Chance" and Bobby has kidnapped Emma. They meet him in the midnight, where Bethany brokers a wager between them; if Rose and Gary beat Bobby in a race, he frees Emma, but if they lose, he gets both their souls. Despite being run off the road again, Rose and Gary cross the finish line first, and Bobby is forced to give Emma back. They go back to the closest place they have to home, the Last Dance Diner.

## Characters

**Major**

* Rose Marshall
	+ The Walking Girl of Route 42, The Phantom Prom Date, The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, The Girl/Woman in the Diner, the Shadow/Spirit of Sparrow Hill Road, The Lady in Green
	+ Rosie
	+ Second-hand Rose - classmates
* Bobby Cross
	+ Robert Cross, Diamond Bobby
* Amy O'Malley
* Emma
* Tommy (Phantom Rider)
* Gary Daniels
* Laura Moorhead
* Mary Dunlavy
	+ Her death is referenced as “Mary or Martha or something…” (The Pretty Little Girl)
* Apple, Queen of the Routewitches
* Bethany, Arthur Marshall’s granddaughter, Rose’s great-niece

**Minor**

* Larry Vibber, trucker - see his death, and then read about it in Moorhead’s research
* Mackenzie, dead cheerleader
* Kyle, Mackenzie’s boyfriend
* Josh, a driver
* Starbright Diner
	+ Dinah, server (now works at Last Dance)
	+ Josie, server
	+ Michael, busboy
	+ Tom, owner
	+ Fry cook
	+ Dmitri, a strigoi
	+ Anthony, a victim
* Ruth Marshall
* Arthur and Morty Marshall, Rose’s older brothers
* Irene Jackson, Rose’s teacher
* David Jackson, Irene’s husband
* Eloise, a routewitch
* Paul, apprentice routewitch
* Devi, Matthew - routewitches in the Queen’s court
* Mikey - tattooist routewitch
* Chris, driver
* Vicky, Bethany’s flunkie
* Ohio State University ghost hunters
	+ Jamie
	+ Angela
	+ Marla
	+ Katherine
	+ Tom
* Dennis, ghost haunting Route 14
* Carl, routewitch and mechanic

**Mentioned**

* Kevin and Evelyn Price (as "editors" of the book)
* Persephone and Hades
* Will, Amy’s boyfriend
* Trina, Dmitri’s girlfriend
* Atlantic Highway
* Chuck, fry cook at Last Dance
* Gary's mom and dad
* Robert Marshall, Rose’s dad
* The White Rose out of Tennessee - a legend that is not Rose
* Former King of the Routewitches
* Patrick Swenson, interviewee
* Chris Hauser, Buckley High Class of ‘12, interviewee
* Texas Bill
* Saint Celia of the Open Hand
* Danny, God of Highways
* Old lady Martin of Buckley
* Healy family
* Bethany’s mother
* Mrs. Buchannan, Rose and Gary’s third grade teacher

## Field Guide

* Beán Sidhe
* Routewitch
* Ambulomancer
* Crossroads
* Crossroads ghost
* Crossroads guardian
* Hitchhiker
* Homecomer
* Ever-Laster
* Phantom Rider
* Poltergeist - a ghost ability
* Psychopomp - a ghost ability
* Strigoi (ghost)
* Strigoi (species)
* Valkyrie
* Haunt
* Spectral lady
* Will-o’-the-wisp
* Maggy Dhu
* Pelesit

**Mentioned**

* Reaper
* Gather-grim
* House-haunter
* Umbramancer
* Goryo
* Shadow people
* Trainspotter
* Doom-crow
* The Kindly Ones

## Locations

* Daylight
	+ Buckley Township, Michigan
		- Sparrow Hill Road
		- Rose’s House
		- Buckley High School
		- Mill Road
		- Bronson’s Diner
		- Secondhand clothing shop
		- Dead Man’s Hill - makeout spot
		- Drive-in movie theater
		- Healy house
		- Sparrow Hill Senior Facility
	+ Dearborn, Michigan
		- Carl’s Garage
	+ Madison, Wisconsin
		- Cornfield
		- County Fair
	+ Birmingham, Alabama
	+ Fork You Grill Diner
	+ Starbright Diner
	+ Jackson, Maine
	+ Daly, Maine
* Twilight
	+ Last Dance Diner / Last Chance Diner
	+ Ocean Lady / Atlantic Highway
		- The Rest Stop
* Starlight
* Midnight

**Mentioned**

* Billings, Montana
	+ Downtown Billings Library
* University of Michigan
* Valhalla
* Savannah, Georgia
* Manzanar, California
* The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

## Organizations

* Centerville High School, Alabama. Purple and gray.
* Oxville High School. The Knights
* Buckley High School. The Buccaneers.

## Objects

**Main Article: Supernatural Objects**

* Seal of Solomon
* Spirit jar
* Salt / Salt circle
* Persephone's blessing

## Trivia

* In-universe media about Rose
	+ “Graveyard Rose,” William Davis and the Billy Davis Band
	+ “American Ghosts,” Michael Hayes, Ghost Ship Press
	+ “Pretty Little Dead Girl,” the Rosettes
	+ Audio recording/transcription of Chris Hauser, Buckley High Class of ‘12
	+ “Dead Man’s Hill,” Johnny Sutton and the Sanders
	+ “On the Trail of the Phantom Prom Date,” Laura Moorhead, University of Colorado

* Death scents:
	+ Rosemary and sweet perfume - survivable accident (The Dead Girl in the Diner)
	+ Ashes and lilies - death on the road (Three Rescues and a Funeral)
	+ Ashes and honeysuckle - death of the road, but not on it. Can be avoided/negotiated (Three Rescues and a Funeral)
	+ Ashes and red cherry syrup: death at the carnival (3 Rescues)
	+ Ashes and wormwood and decay: Bobby Cross (3 Rescues) - and gasoline (H&H)

## Quotes

* “Just one more girl who raced and lost in the hand of the forest”
* “God save me from smart people and college students. You’re all such fucking idiots.” -Rose

## Pop Culture

* **Music:** The Country Gentlemen, Buddy Holly, Tom Petty, Johnny Ray, Bing Crosby, Journey, The Doors, Jim Morrison, AC/DC, Beatles
* **TV and Movies:** James Dean, Sandra Dee, Sleeping Beauty, Miss Teenage USA, Hallmark, Titanic, Wizard of Oz, Ghostbusters, Scooby Doo, Cujo, the Addams family
* **Mythology and Literature:** Persephone and Hades, Gabriel’s trumpet, Macbeth, Scrooge, Pandora, Stephen King
* **Other:** Mercurochrome, Japanese internment camps

## Playlist

Not to be confused with the songs written by Seanan McGuire about Rose.

Spotify (missing "And A Tear Isn't Such A Bad Thing" by The Guggenheim Grotto)

YouTube