The Water and the Wild (Unabridged‪)‬

For as long as Lottie Fiske can remember, the only people who seem to care about her have been her best friend, Eliot, and the mysterious letter-writer who sends her birthday gifts. But now strange things and people are arriving on the island Lottie calls home, and Eliot's getting sicker, with a disease the doctors have given up trying to cure. Lottie is helpless, useless, powerless. 

And then a door opens in the apple tree. 

Follow Lottie down through the apple roots to another world - a world of magic both treacherous and beautiful - in pursuit of the impossible: a cure for the incurable, a use for the useless, and protection against the pain of loss. 

Book 1 in the spellbinding Water and the Wild fantasy trilogy.