In a culture bent on metrics and mistrust, a debut novel argues for intuition as responsibility—not spectacle.
When a novelist says a book was “shaped by Buffalo,” it often means geography or grit. In the case of The Invisible Eye—a paranormal conspiracy thriller by Sparrow Hall—the Buffalo imprint is stranger and more specific: a lineage of psychic culture radiating from Lily Dale, the historic hamlet an hour south of the city, and a creative restlessness sparked during the author’s time at the University at Buffalo.
Hall—who studied at UB in the fall of 1994 before settling in New York’s Capital Region—frames the novel against two worlds that rarely share a shelf: New York City’s image-driven fashion industry and the shadowed interiors of upstate New York. At the center is Catherine Harper, a woman with a psychic sensitivity she would rather mute than make known. Her ability unsettles her relationships, complicates her career, and—at first—feels more like a drain than a gift. Over the course of the story, that reluctance turns to resolve as she realizes the only way to decode her past, and her father’s classified research, is to trust the faculty she has been trying to manage away.
That pivot—from concealment to ownership—gives the book its voltage. It’s also where the Buffalo connection matters most.
A town that identifies with the in-between
Lily Dale, founded in the late 19th century, is one of the rare American communities where psychic identity is not whispered but named, practiced, and protected. Hall researched there not to set scenes but to take the measure of a place where intuition is a public posture. If Catherine represents the urban professional who hides her second sight to be taken seriously, Lily Dale is the counter-example: a living archive of mediums, open-air readings, and porch-to-porch talk about the unseen…