It starts out with 14-year-old Dorothy and her father moving to her Uncle Al's farm in Florida, following the death of her mother when a fire consumes their family home. In one fell swoop, Dorothy loses everything, and it doesn't help matters that her father's alcoholism and carelessness started the fire. Needless to say, she's in a world of pain and she doesn't want his help coping with it.
While she is cleaning out some old junk in her uncle's barn, she comes across a bunch of photos of her mother, her father, and Uncle Al, as the trio were childhood friends. She also finds a strange pink glass key that has some mysterious properties, including growing exponentially in apparent weight every time she picks it up. She soon discovers that this key can transport her to a strange world with mysterious creatures and dangerous fauna, but she also meets another 14-year-old there named Charlie. He's a veteran of this world, since he has been coming much longer and he even has a camp set up there, and his key is made from a different material, but functions the same way. She discovers Charlie is from 1946 Britain, while she is from 1986 America. When they combine their keys, they travel to yet another world, where they meet Rageesha or "Rags" as they come to call him, also 14, but from 1966 India.
The three bond as fast friends, calling themselves the Three Key Children, but then they start combining their three keys in various ways and find new, devastated worlds that they'd rather not revisit. Each time they return to their own homes, they are each met with tremendous sadness and pain, so they long to return to each other's company in the alternate worlds. Unfortunately, there is an evil creature called The Spintwister who rules these lands and feeds off of the pain of children, as those are the people always drawn to these weird keys. While The Spintwister wants Charlie and Rags to stay because he can take away their pain, in doing so, he repairs his own damaged memories about who he really is, but he also removes their memories, the good and the bad. He doesn't want anything to do with Dorothy, calling her a "no-girl" who isn't real and he claims she has stolen the key.
Dorothy finds herself confused about who she really is and hopes that she can help her new friends, but The Spintwister has even started following her back home to Florida and tormenting her there. She eventually enlists the help of her dad, Uncle Al, and his ranch hand, Isias, but Dorothy soon finds that nothing is as it seems.
Now, while I said it starts out with Dorothy losing her home and mom in a fire, that isn't exactly true. The story actually begins 30-something years in the future from the time of these events, with a now very wealthy Rageesha bringing his dear Dorothy to a high-end mental health and rehab facility, in an attempt to have Ellen, the administrator, help with bringing Dorothy back to him, since she has been in a vegetative state since they were 14. The book comes back to this future (or actually present day) time at various points as Rageesha explains to Ellen how Dorothy got to this point and weaves this fantastical tale in an attempt to invest her in Dorothy's situation and recovery.
While Dorothy and the Glass Key does weave a fantastical tale, I found it a bit difficult to really tear through. Personally, I typically read a book very quickly, especially if I am into it. I can easily read 50-100 pages before I go to bed, but with this book, I found 20-25 pages was about all I could read. It's not that it was too dense to understand, but I found that I would forget what I had read the previous night. It just didn't stick with me, I suppose. While the alternate worlds were described, they didn't "pop" in my mind's eye and overall, I just didn't love this book.
While I think the concept of alternate worlds that exist beyond space and time is very cool and the initial impression of this story intrigued me, it just didn't pay off for me. I feel like it could have used a little bit more fleshing out towards the end and everything didn't quite come together for me at the resolution of the tale. Your mileage may vary.
