Every Heart A Doorway

Published in 2016, Every Heart A Doorway is a young adult fantasy novella by Seanan McGuire. The first book in the Wayward Children series, the story concerns a boarding school for children who have visited magical lands and since returned to the real world. The book has won several awards, including the 2016 Nebula Award for Best Novella, the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novella, and the 2017 Locus Award for Best Novella. McGuire, who also writes under the name Mira Grant, is the author of the October Daye series and the InCryptid series.

Seventeen-year-old Nancy Whitman has been to the Halls of the Dead. By going through a magical door in her basement that led to a world of pomegranate groves and cool, eternal twilight, Nancy became a servant of the Lord and Lady of the Dead, who value stillness and peace above all else. But now, the Lord of the Dead has sent her back to the real world, having instructed her that she must be sure she wants to spend the rest of her days with him before she can return.

All Nancy can think about is going back to the halls, which she considers her true home. Although her parents were overjoyed at her return, they cannot fathom this waifish, quiet girl who stands still as a statue for hours on end. Thinking she has been traumatized by a kidnapping, they send her to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children.



Eleanor tells the parents of children like Nancy that her school will help them readjust to a normal life after past trauma. But Eleanor's true goal is to provide a place of acceptance and support for teenagers who have traveled to magical worlds and been returned against their will. The worlds the teens have been to range from dark underworlds to candy-colored fairylands, but all the kids wish for nothing more than to find "their door" and return.

When Nancy arrives, she is greeted by Eleanor, a spry old woman appearing to be in her sixties, though her actual age is closer to a hundred. Eleanor introduces her to Sumi, her new roommate. Sumi returned from a "high nonsense" world, and so she is erratic in her dress and mannerisms. She takes a liking to Nancy after hearing her story, calling her "the craziest card in the deck."

When Nancy finds that her parents have replaced her preferred black and white wardrobe with colorful clothes, Sumi takes her to meet Kade. Kade was once Katie, a beautiful girl stolen by fairies. But when Katie met the Goblin King, she felt the courage to live as who she truly was on the inside: a boy. The fairies were outraged and banished Kade from their world. Now, he attends the school and runs a clothing exchange, where he trades Nancy's rainbow wardrobe for black and white clothing.



Over the next two days, Nancy attends classes, dinner, and group therapy, where she meets more of the school's residents. The twin girls, Jack and Jill, returned from a cold, cruel world called the Moors, where Jack apprenticed to a mad scientist and Jill was a servant to a master vampire. Lauriel passed through a tiny door into a world of genteel spiders and was made their princess. Then there is Lundy, who made a bargain to age in reverse in an attempt to stay in her magical world. Although she now looks like an eight-year-old girl, she serves as a teacher and psychologist at the Home.

The next day, Sumi's body is found with her hands cut off. The students are thrown into a frenzy, with suspicion falling on Nancy since she just returned from a land of the dead. But the main suspect in the students' minds is mad scientist Jack. Eleanor must report the death to the authorities, but she is confident it will not be enough to close down the school.
The next day, however, Lauriel's body is found with her eyes removed. Not wanting to report a second murder, Eleanor asks Jack to dispose of the body to make it look as though Lauriel ran away. Nancy and Christopher, a boy from a world of dancing skeletons, offer to help. Jack uses acid to burn the flesh from the body, and when just the skeleton is left, Christopher plays a tune on a bone flute. Lauriel's bones rise, and when Jack asks her to tell them who killed her, she points to the empty air beside Jack. After the skeleton is buried, both Kade and Christopher express romantic interest in Nancy, and she confesses that she is asexual.

When Lundy's body is found the next day with her brain cut out, the students threaten to gang up on Nancy, but Eleanor stops them. Nancy, Kade, and Christopher go looking for Jack and Jill; they find Jack with a stab wound. While Kade and Christopher attend to Jack, Nancy stands still as a statue and sees Jill pass by with blood on her hands.
Jack confesses that it was, indeed, Jill who tried to kill her. They go to the attic and find Jill trying to create a skeleton key back to the Moors with the body parts of her murder victims. Jack stabs her with a pair of scissors, killing her instantly. When the others express shock that she killed her twin sister, Jack explains that she can resurrect Jill in the Moors. With the bloody scissors, Jack draws a door in the air, and the sisters vanish back to their beloved world.



Weeks later, Nancy is packing to go home for the holidays when she finds a note from Sumi in her suitcase: "The only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you." When the realization of this truth hits Nancy, a magical door opens in her room leading back to the twilight pomegranate groves. Stepping through, Nancy is finally home.