This book starts like a Southern summer day – slow, steady and calm – until a body is discovered in a box spring – then hang on.  The story is woven between a couple of small towns – where everyone knows everyone but might not always see connections.  The two main characters, Pleasant, a 15 years old and Clarissa, a mature woman are both on the trail of two separate crimes.  Both, as well as many supporting characters, are well written and complex.  The plot web that this author created kept me looking for the connections and being rewarded when lines intersected.

This was the first book I have read by this author, but I have a feeling it will not be the last.  I always love a book I can slow down and savor and this was definitely in that category.

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SUMMARY

In the town of Hollow Creek, South Carolina two separate murders, fifteen years apart, unite fifteen-year-old Pleasant Day and sixty-year-old Clarissa Blackwell.  As Pleasant Day struggles with her mother’s distance, her father’s infidelity and the death of her best friend, she draws closer to Clarissa, an older woman with the secrets to heal her.  But Clarissa has struggles of her own as she faces betrayal and seeks to come to terms with old wounds.  With her unpredictable psychic ability to ‘read people’ Clarissa uncovers the answers to a deadly crime and to Pleasant’s true identity.  In the end, both Pleasant and Clarissa’s worlds are transformed by the truths they’re forced to accept, and both find solace and strength in the histories that have shaped them.