Tewksbury Public Library

All too human, a saga of deadly deceptions and dark desires, Karen Wills

eng

no index present

fiction

All too human

1085575416

Karen Wills

a saga of deadly deceptions and dark desires

"In 1905, Rebecca Bryan begins her legal career in Kalispell, Montana, mentored by her senior law partner and only living relative, Max Bryan. Max suffers a stroke after learning of the death of Lucinda Cale, an affluent, artistic widow he'd loved for years. There's a troubling question of Lucinda's missing will. Max believes it could reveal financial information and truths long denied. After traveling by train to the boomtown of Jennings, Rebecca hires a coach to take her to join the Cale family at Lucinda's mansion, Eagle Mountain. After a wheel breaks and her drunken driver passes out, Rebecca braves a nocturnal forest trek during winter's first bitter-cold snowfall. She finds the cabin/studio of Lucinda's compelling youngest son, Bretton. Next morning she meets Damon, Lucinda's disgraced oldest son, his pregnant wife, and their children, mysterious thirteen-year-old Amy, and uncomplicated five-year-old Teddy. The stakes of inheritance are high for the adults and Amy. Searching the library, Rebecca discovers Lucinda's hidden diaries. They tell of a naïve bride finding freedom from scandals and poverty via marriage to handsome, wealthy Civil War veteran Garrett Cale. Lucinda describes the newlyweds' journey by steamboat from St. Louis to Fort Benton, Montana, then by wagon to Eagle Mountain, their home in Northwest mining country. The diaries soon reveal ongoing physical and emotional abuse, dark deceptions, and Lucinda's secret passion. Lucinda alters from a hopeful bride to a schemer using her beauty to control the men around her, possibly to murderous ends"--, Provided by publisher