Erica Ryan’s debut novel about love, loss, and family reveals how tragic secrets from the past can have a powerful impact on the living. Soon after Dodge Montgomery learns of the death of the paternal grandfather he was named for but has never met, he travels from New York City to a small, idyllic town in Alabama, where he finds everyone already knows his name. Having never met his father, the man who abandoned his mother before Dodge was born, he must face his family’s heartbreaking past, while unraveling the familial ties that bind him to a place he didn’t know existed. The reluctant heir to his prominent Southern family’s fortune, including their ancestral home and land, he quickly begins to learn of a dark past through the stories of the town’s inhabitants, who seem to know his family’s history as if it were their own. But each step in his reluctant journey brings more mysteries: Why did his father disappear only to return to the town he swore he would never see again? Why does the man who was treated like a son by Dodge’s grandfather have so much hatred for the new Dodge Montgomery? Are the house and land really “cursed”, as he has been warned? From the very first page, the book takes the reader on a leisurely southern journey toward the final, shocking twist unfurled at its conclusion.

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