Publication Date: Oct 2024
Synopsis:
1932. Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year’s party at Plum Orchard is a lively young men from some of America’s finest families come to experience the area’s hunting beside a local guide; a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week’s end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined.
1959. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly thirty years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend – and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she’s raised a ghost–someone who hasn’t been seen since that fateful night in 1932.
As a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape and shifting tides reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along, two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect to illuminate the life-changing power of finding truth in a folktale.
What To Expect:
Readers can expect a dual timeline story set on the mystical and remote Cumberland Island.
Content Warnings:
Language: Mild – No strong language, some mild profanity occasionally
Sexual Content: Closed Door – 2-3 closed door/fade to black scenes
Violence: Mild
Substance Use: Cigarettes, a drug concocted from morning glories is used and abused
Prejudices: Racism is a theme (set in 1950s), both against American Indians and African Americans
Religious Themes: One character prays to a force that makes the waters rise once. Ghosts.
Other Topics: Suicide is mentioned but not committed.
Thank you to the publisher for a gifted copy.
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