Midnight in Everwood

In 1906 Nottingham, ballet dancer Marietta Stelle is expected to abandon her art and accept a respectable marriage. When her family's mysterious neighbor, Dr. Drosselmeier, reappears in her life, Marietta finds herself drawn into a hidden, enchanted realm that exists behind the ordinary world — one governed by its own dangerous rules and ruled over by figures who are far from benevolent.

M.A. Kuzniar's "Midnight in Everwood" reworks The Nutcracker as adult fantasy, keeping the familiar shapes of the story — a magical toymaker figure, a girl caught between duty and desire, a portal into another world at Christmas — while foregrounding the coercive pressure placed on Marietta by both her family and the powerful men around her, and the cost of choosing a life of her own.