Grace Alban has spent more than twenty years avoiding her childhood home, the stately Alban House on the shores of Lake Superior, for reasons she would rather forget. But when her mother's unexpected death brings Grace and her teenage daughter back, she finds more is haunting the halls and passageways of Alban House than her own personal demons.
Long-buried family secrets, a packet of old love letters, and a lost manuscript plunge Grace into a decades-old mystery about a scandalous party at Alban House, when a world-famous author took his own life and Grace's aunt disappeared without a trace. The night has been shrouded in secrecy by the powerful Alban family for all of these years. Her mother intended to tell the truth about that night to a reporter on the very day she died--could it have been murder? Or was she a victim of the supposed Alban curse? Grace soon realizes her family secrets tangle and twist as darkly as the mansion's secret passages.
With the help of the disarmingly kind--and attractive--Reverend Matthew Parker, Grace must uncover the truth about her home and its curse before she and her daughter become the next victims.
**
### From Booklist
Webb (The Tale of Halcyon Crane, 2010) has cooked up another confection filled with family secrets coming to light in the Midwest. After her mother, Adele, dies suddenly, Grace Alban returns to the Minnesota mansion she grew up in, with her teenage daughter, Amity, in tow. While going through her mother’s possessions, Grace is shocked to discover love letters written to Adele by a writer named David Coleville, Grace’s father’s best friend, who killed himself back in the 1950s, on the same night Grace’s aunt Fate disappeared. When Grace and Matthew Parker, the handsome minister who presided over her mother’s funeral, discover Coleville’s unpublished novel, they find it to be a thinly veiled account of his time spent at Alban House, his burgeoning love affair with Adele, and a mysterious lady in white haunting the grounds. Grace is further shocked when an ambitious reporter shows up at Adele’s funeral with Aunt Fate, who is very much alive but not entirely sane, and who may be a threat to Grace and her daughter. Magic and mystery intertwine in Webb’s engaging midwestern gothic. --Kristine Huntley
### About the Author
Wendy Webb's first novel, *The Tale of Halcyon Crane*, was the 2011 winner of the Minnesota Book Award for genre fiction, and an IndieNext Pick from the Independent Booksellers Association, a Midwest Connections Pick from the Midwest Booksellers Association and a Great Lakes, Great Reads Pick from the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association. She lives in northern Minnesota with her spouse, photographer Steve Burmeister, and their Alaskan Malamute, Molly. She is at work on her next novel.
Description:
Grace Alban has spent more than twenty years avoiding her childhood home, the stately Alban House on the shores of Lake Superior, for reasons she would rather forget. But when her mother's unexpected death brings Grace and her teenage daughter back, she finds more is haunting the halls and passageways of Alban House than her own personal demons. Long-buried family secrets, a packet of old love letters, and a lost manuscript plunge Grace into a decades-old mystery about a scandalous party at Alban House, when a world-famous author took his own life and Grace's aunt disappeared without a trace. The night has been shrouded in secrecy by the powerful Alban family for all of these years. Her mother intended to tell the truth about that night to a reporter on the very day she died--could it have been murder? Or was she a victim of the supposed Alban curse? Grace soon realizes her family secrets tangle and twist as darkly as the mansion's secret passages. With the help of the disarmingly kind--and attractive--Reverend Matthew Parker, Grace must uncover the truth about her home and its curse before she and her daughter become the next victims. ** ### From Booklist Webb (The Tale of Halcyon Crane, 2010) has cooked up another confection filled with family secrets coming to light in the Midwest. After her mother, Adele, dies suddenly, Grace Alban returns to the Minnesota mansion she grew up in, with her teenage daughter, Amity, in tow. While going through her mother’s possessions, Grace is shocked to discover love letters written to Adele by a writer named David Coleville, Grace’s father’s best friend, who killed himself back in the 1950s, on the same night Grace’s aunt Fate disappeared. When Grace and Matthew Parker, the handsome minister who presided over her mother’s funeral, discover Coleville’s unpublished novel, they find it to be a thinly veiled account of his time spent at Alban House, his burgeoning love affair with Adele, and a mysterious lady in white haunting the grounds. Grace is further shocked when an ambitious reporter shows up at Adele’s funeral with Aunt Fate, who is very much alive but not entirely sane, and who may be a threat to Grace and her daughter. Magic and mystery intertwine in Webb’s engaging midwestern gothic. --Kristine Huntley ### About the Author Wendy Webb's first novel, *The Tale of Halcyon Crane*, was the 2011 winner of the Minnesota Book Award for genre fiction, and an IndieNext Pick from the Independent Booksellers Association, a Midwest Connections Pick from the Midwest Booksellers Association and a Great Lakes, Great Reads Pick from the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association. She lives in northern Minnesota with her spouse, photographer Steve Burmeister, and their Alaskan Malamute, Molly. She is at work on her next novel.