When Ashley and her widowed mother move into an apartment on the second floor of grumpy old Miss Cooper's house, Ashley is immediately drawn to the tangled, overgrown rose garden at the end of the lawn. After making sure Miss Cooper isn't watching, Ashley and a neighbor girl, Kristi, explore the garden. While digging some plants away from a long-dry pool, the girls unearth a box, and inside it they find a turn-of-the-century doll. The doll is only the first of a series of startling discoveries that lead Ashley and Kristi through the hedge and into the twilit past. There they meet a white cat that casts no shadow and Louisa, an ailing child whose beloved doll has mysteriously disappeared. Ashley suspects that the doll they found in the garden is Louisa's, but by this time she has been forced to hand it over to Miss Cooper. How can she and Kristi retrieve the doll and return it to Louisa before it's too late? Book jacket.
