In the summer of 1890, two young women posed for artist Winslow Homer on the coast of Maine. What happened that summer, the secrets the women kept and the lies they told, changed their families forever.
Now, more than a hundred years later, one of their descendants has been murder, leaving antique print dealer Maggie Summer the family papers that may finally reveal the truth. Maggie's vision of a relaxing vacation in Maine, antiquing with beau WillBrewer and visiting his Aunt Nettie, turns into a murder investigation, as Maggie must discover which of the family myths are based on reality, and which on lies,before someone she cares about -- or even she herself -- becomes the next victim,
Excerpt
Journal of Anna May Pratt: June 2, 1890
I have decided to begin a journal, since I have now passed my eighteenth birthday and am ready to begin my life as a woman, I intend to keep these pages so that when I am an old woman of perhaps fifty, too aged to care about anything but the past, I will be able to remember how exciting it was to anticipate the possibiities of life.
My sister Sarah, who is still a child who has not yet pinned up her hair, thinks I am foolish. But all spring, as the snow melted and the mud dried and the spring peepers began to sing, I felt certain my life was about to change. Sarah says I will marry and have seven children and gray hair and sun-darkened skin by the time I am thirty, like most women here in Waymouth.
But I am not like those women. I feel certain I am destined for a life of importance. A life that will be remembered.
I will not allow my youth to be wasted through waiting for others to act. I have resolved to set the course of my own future, and am determined to record and savor every minute of it. Yesterday may have marked the beginning of that adventure.
Following several murders, means, motive, and opportunity all point to out-of-work actresses Bootsie Kittredge and Babs Harrison. Their claims of righteousness and lack of guilt seem fabricated, thanks to a cheerfull announcement made to the patrons
