The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond 
By Jaime Jo Wright
Bethany House 2018
Back Cover:
For over a century, the town of Gossamer Grove has thrived on its charm and midwestern values, but Annalise Forsythe knows painful secrets, including her own, hover just beneath the pleasant facade. When a man is found dead in his run-down trailer home, Annalise inherits the trailer, along with the pictures, vintage obituaries, and old revival posters covering its walls. As she sorts through the collection, she’s wholly unprepared for the ramifications of the dark and deadly secrets she’ll uncover.
A century earlier, Gossamer Grove has been stirred into chaos by the arrival of controversial and charismatic twin revivalists. The chaos takes a murderous turn when Libby Sheffield, working at her father’s newspaper, receives an obituary for a reputable church deacon hours before his death. As she works with the deacon’s son to unravel the mystery behind the crime, it becomes undeniably clear that a reckoning has come to town–but it isn’t until another obituary arrives that they realize the true depths of the danger they’ve waded into.
Two women, separated by a hundred years, must uncover the secrets within the borders of their own town before it’s too late and they lose their future–or their very souls.
Review:
Historical fiction with a mystery separated by a century, Gossamer Grove is home to two strong, but realistic female protagonists who find themselves threatened by secrets, betrayals, and the question of God’s grace. Written with beautiful prose and atmosphere, Jaime Jo Wright has created a masterpiece worthy of the Edgar Allen Poe quotes throughout her book. While her first book, “The House on Foster Hill” was excellent in and of itself, this book takes it to the next level of literature, with thought provoking phrases I was prompted time and again to underline and annotate. Gossamer Grove is a small, quiet town, but filled with sinful people. For a book so filled with edge-of-the-seat mystery, I didn’t want it to end! But when I finally read the last chapters, I was so pleased. I don’t want to spoil it, but there is a surprising love story twist at the end of the book that is SO perfect–a love story for people like me who don’t like love stories. It’s raw, witty, awkward, and weird, but so, so right (Wright).
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Want more? Check out this excerpt from The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond.
“Obituaries were the final diary page of life lived, whether pleasant or tragic, full or barren.”
― Jaime Jo Wright, The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond
Bold Reads 