A Sound Among Trees by Susan Meissner starts out so slowly, I
didn't really want to finish it. The book really doesn't pick up until almost
the last chapter.
Susan Meissner has interwoven a modern day story with a
civil war era story, and I feel the book would have been better if she had
created two stories instead of one.
The modern day story is full of superstition and unfounded
ghost stories perpetrated by Adelaide Bishop, owner of the ancestral home.
Adelaide is convinced there are not ghosts in the home but
that the home, Holly Oak, is trying to exact penance from all the female
inhabitants both past and current - penance
for her great grandmother's treason in helping the Union soldiers. How else, she reasons, would there have been
so many losses. Losses that include the
death of her granddaughter, Sara, and the running away of her daughter,
Caroline, Sara's mother.
When Carson, Adelaide's grandson in law (Sara's widower),
marries Marielle, a woman he met and fell in love with over the internet, the community wastes no time in apprising her
of the "ghosts" of Holly Oak.
Marielle, just a little too susceptible to the stories, gets all caught up in the intrigue.
The book really
doesn't begin to work until after a
major mishap and Caroline's return. It's
as if everyone needed a slap to get back into reality and Caroline provided the
slap.
I normally love historical fiction; however, A
Sound Among Trees never really delivered.
This book was provided for me by WaterBrook Multnomah in exchange for an unbiased review.
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