There used to be magic in the world, magic that has faded or fizzled as technology has progressed and purity of imagination has become attuned to a different frequency. Do little girls still believe in fairies? Can they conjure a fairy that doesn’t look like the Disney version of Tinker Bell? Are they clapping their hands in the belief that that’s how fairies get their wings? These are questions that crossed my mind as I read Hazel Gaynor’s new novel, THE COTTINGLEY SECRET, a story that focuses on belief, hope, and the real photos that two girls in Yorkshire took of fairies during the ravaged years of the First World War.

In April 1917, eight-year-old Frances Griffiths travels from her home in Cape Town, South Africa, to Yorkshire, England, with her mother after her father enlists to “do his part” in the Great War. Frances and her mother are going to live with her Aunt Polly and Uncle Arthur, and their daughter, Elsie, in Cottingley, a small hamlet in Yorkshire. Though Elsie is nearly twice Frances’ age, the girls become instant friends and explore Cottingley Wood’s streams and beck that lie beyond the cottage where they live.

"[Gaynor] has a gift with prose, and the novel reads fluidly and easily through its nearly 400 pages."

It is at the beck that Frances first sees fairies. They can’t be rushed and always come at sunset on a warm day. The fairies are a reprieve for Frances, who is struggling to adjust to her new home and new country, desperately missing her father, and concerned by the story of her teacher’s daughter who went missing in the wood a few years before.

Eventually she tells Elsie that she sees fairies, and one fateful night, after an emotional discussion about her behavior, she accidentally blurts her secret to her mother and aunt and uncle. In an effort to cultivate belief from the adults, Elsie gets the idea to fake a picture of the fairies. The girls pull it off, thinking it won’t go beyond the walls of the cottage in which they live, but the photo becomes a sensation. Arthur Conan Doyle writes about it and publishes it in Strand Magazine. Reporters come from London to investigate its validity, and the photo of Frances surrounded by dancing fairies becomes a symbol of hope for a nation in the midst of a long and excruciating war.

But the tale of Frances, Elsie and the fairies is only part of THE COTTINGLEY SECRET. A present-day storyline introduces the reader to Olivia Kavanagh, an Irishwoman in her mid-30s reeling from the death of her beloved grandfather, who has left her his failing bookshop and a manuscript titled “Notes on a Fairy Tale” written by Frances Griffiths. Olivia’s life is a bit of a mess. She’s engaged to a man she really doesn’t love but fears breaking off the engagement, works in London as a bookbinder but feels no ties to the city, has just discovered she’s infertile and, most of all, has no idea who Olivia Kavanagh really is. The bookshop and the manuscript, seemingly unrelated but for their giver, enter Olivia’s life at a fortuitous moment and will help to shape the decisions she makes and the paths she takes as she works to put the pieces of her life together.

As happens more often than not in historical fiction these days, Gaynor weaves the two points of view together in the guise of Olivia reading Frances’ manuscript. She has a gift with prose, and the novel reads fluidly and easily through its nearly 400 pages. The story of Frances and Elsie is based in truth, and facsimiles of the five fairy photos taken between 1917 and 1920 appear in the back of the book, along with a note from Frances’ daughter. The fictional Olivia storyline is less compelling than Frances’ tale and somewhat predictable, but ultimately delivers the message that hope in times of the greatest despair is the most necessary kind of belief.