Description:
Pat Montella, heroine of Elena Santangelo's previous romantic mystery By Blood Possessed, is back in another adventure. As the unpaid director of the Julia Bell Foundation, Pat's collecting unemployment and living on...Magnolia Shelby's Civil War-era estate in Virginia while she waits for her own future to reveal itself. But it's the past that comes clear first when the amateur archaeological efforts of Aunt Maggie and her friends unearth a long-dead body on the property Pat will someday inherit. And it's Pat's unique ability to "see" back to 1870 (and reconstruct through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy named Emancipation the circumstances under which the skeleton met its end) that turns the somewhat creaky wheels of the plot. More interesting than the contemporary action (which includes a couple of murders connected to secrets that some of Aunt Maggie's neighbors would just as soon stay buried) are the flashbacks to Reconstruction, the racial politics of the post-slavery years, and the fascinating cast of characters who populated Bell Run back then and whose ghosts still haunt the Virginia countryside. This slow-moving but nicely written ghost story should win Santangelo and her heroine new fans. --Jane Adams
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