Abby and the Magic Key
Reader Alert Our young protagonist experiences trauma in this story. Her mother is emotionally unavailable and oblivious to the danger her current boyfriend poses to her daughter. He is violent and controlling with the mother, and he does escalate to physical violence at a critical turning point in the plot. The main character's development from helpless terror to courageously fighting back is the main storyline and at a point down the plot road, she does fight back and save herself and her mother. The narrative does not dwell on the gory details of sexual or domestic abuse. However, the language is straightforward and does not hide any trauma behind euphemisms. This is a story of overcoming traumatic events and facing one's life with wide and hopeful eyes after character growth.
Thirteen year old Abigail Constance Elizabeth Stewart, known as Abby, is just surviving day to day. When Abby's father died three years earlier her mother withdrew, leaving Abby to raise herself while avoiding the sexual advances of her mother's latest boyfriend. As her mother slips deeper into alcohol and drugs, Abby is too afraid of loosing anything more in her life to stand up for herself and demand change. She buries all her pain and loneliness where it festers and is poisoning the rest of life.
She awakens one night to a violent argument between her mother and the boyfriend and grasps the heirloom key given to her by her father's aunt and her namesake, Abigail Stewart. Thinking the jeweled key is fit for a princess, she wishes with all her heart that if only she could be a princess, then she would have the power to fix all the things that were wrong in her life.
The key acts on Abby's wish and transport her to Scotland in the year 1392 where she awakens and is mistaken for a missing princess, an ancient ancestor, Princess Elisabeth.
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