New Hampshire, 1865. Marion Abbott is summoned to Brawders House asylum to collect the body of her sister, Alice. She'd been found dead after falling four stories from a steep-pitched roof. Officially: an accident. Confidentially: suicide. But Marion believes a third option: murder.
Returning to her family home to stay with her brother and his second wife, the recently widowed Marion is expected to quiet her feelings of guilt and grief-to let go of the dead and embrace the living. But that's not easy in this house full of haunting memories.
Just when the search for the truth seems hopeless, a stranger approaches Marion with chilling words: I saw her fall.
Now Marion is more determined than ever to find out what happened that night at Brawders, and why. With no one she can trust, Marion may risk her own life to uncover the secrets buried with Alice in the family plot.
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'Is it her?' The ward attendant holds up the oiled tarp. CHAPTER ONE
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(Lake Union Publishing, 1 March 2021, ebook, 287 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle, #AmazonFirstReads)
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I thought this was an incredible book. I've read books that deal with a similar premise but this is among the best. I didn't realise it was set in 1865 and thought it was set a lot later though still far enough in the past to be classed as 'historical fiction'. I enjoyed the way the author uses occasional flashbacks to show how easy it was to get Alice committed to an asylum. Marion is the chief narrator except for the last stunning chapter and you really get to know her as she refuses to accept the asylum's determination to write off what happened to Alice as a suicide and finds herself attacked from every angle. The asylum close ranks against her and refuse to answer her questions which are perfectly reasonable considering how Alice died. Her sister-in-law becomes abusive at her insistence of talking about Alice and probing in her death. Even her brother says she's acting like a madwoman just like Alice with a note of threat in his words. But Marion refuses to back down, bad ass that she is. I loved this book.