When Raissa James'
Uncle Brett invites her to Caoin House, an elegant mansion near
Mobile, Alabama, it seems like an opportunity to try to forget her
grief over Alex's death. Her husband was killed in WWI. They hardly
had a chance to get to know each other before he was gone. In a
further effort to pull Raissa out of her life as a teacher in
Savannah, Uncle Brett arranges a gala celebration that ends in
tragedy.
As Raissa learns
more about the house, she realizes it has been the scene of tragedy
from it's inception. The ghost of the lovely Eva, first mistress of
the house, was murdered there, and is said to roam the halls. Raissa
herself sees a Confederate officer standing in the oak grove beneath
her window, and there are more frightening encounters with the
ghosts.
The story takes
place shortly after WWI. The South still felt the bruises of the
Civil War and in places like Mobile, segregation was a fact of life.
The author shows this problem well and Raissa and her uncle are good
protagonists because neither believes in excluding blacks from the
society, but they too have to live by the rules of the area. This is
shown plainly when the Klu Klux Klan is involved in a lynching.
The characters are
well done. Raissa is the typical modern woman in the wake of WWI. She
wants more freedom to pursue a career. She hates it when she is
relegated to second class by the men around her. The pace is good.
The author cleverly releases bits of the old tragedy in doses that
keep you reading to find out what happened. My only quarrel with the
writing is that the dialog is sometimes stiff and can veer into an
information dump when the characters are trying to explain paranormal
phenomena.
If you like a good
ghost story, I can recommend this one. It's best not to read it late
at night.
I received this book
from Net Galley for this review.
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