This atmospheric blend of historical fiction and original fairy tale spans 15 years in the life of Coriander, daughter of a London merchant and his fairy-princess wife. The protagonist relates the events of her life from early childhood to about age 17, a life shaped by both the politics of Oliver Cromwell's Puritan England and the oddly parallel politics of her mother's fairy kingdom. Moving between England and her mother's world with a pair of magical silver shoes, Coriander recovers a lost treasure, frees an enslaved fairy prince, defeats an evil witch, and then must do the hardest thing of all: decide in which world she ultimately belongs. Readers who love romantic fairy tales will delight in the way her dual heritage allows her to honor her human father and still have her fairy prince. Fans of historical fiction, in turn, will enjoy ornate descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of 17th-century London, which unfold in both Coriander's slightly formal voice and through the distinctive dictions of numerous, well-realized secondary characters. The stories of these characters, several shifts in time as Coriander travels between the worlds, a flashback to explain the witch's early involvement in Coriander's life, and other digressions complicate the plot, and the connection between the realms remains unclear at story's end, but these small shortcomings detract little from this absorbing, picturesque tale.