With a troubled marriage, and the haunting memories of ghosts, bones, and dead bodies, Grace Marsden needs solace. The invitation from her childhood friend presents Grace with an opportunity for respite on Christian Island.
Georgian Bay in the off-season provides a perfect venue for relaxation, until a fluke snowstorm shatters the serenity. Grace and nine other people find themselves trapped on the island and the prime suspects in the mysterious death of an island Elder.
An ancient Indian tragedy, island ghost sightings, and modern day treachery twist lives until more deaths and more danger make Grace unsure of whom she can trust.
When the spirit of the lighthouse keeper beckons to her– is it to warn her or harm her?
Read an Excerpt:
“It’s behind that wall.”
My brother’s whisper brought Joan and me to his side. We’d climbed up to the lantern room in the old lighthouse over an hour ago, ostensibly to take notes and measurements.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“There can’t be anything behind these walls, Marty—they’re made of three-foot-thick stone. Behind is out there.” Joan motioned toward the windows.
“There it is again. Hear it?”
I heard a faint scratching.
Joan shook her head. “I didn’t hear it. If it’s anything, it has to be coming from downstairs. Sound displaces in lighthouses…something about the cylindrical shape.”
Marty started down the stairs. Joan shook her head and smiled. “It’s probably an island rat,” she whispered.
“Yuck. The brochure said nothing about rates, island or otherwise.” I referred to my childhood friend’s letter inviting me to Christian Island for a visit. “And while we’re on that page, couldn’t you and Dave have waited to sell the end of the season? Who visits the island in January?”
“People live her year round. It’s only us ‘cottagers’ who can’t cope in the dark months. Besides, you get a better price when people are freezing and longing to have their own cottage by May. It’s all about marketing, Gracie.”
I smiled and grumbled at my oldest friend. We’d been through elementary and high school together.
“Hey. Down here. I found something.” We hurried to the main gallery. Marty crouched on the floor next to the only furniture in the room, a small built-in bookcase. The Christian Island lighthouse had been vacant since 1922, and the iron from the lantern room had been cut up for scrap during World War II. Joan’s group hoped to replace the Dioptric lantern by 1999 as part of the restoration.
“If this is supposed to become an historical marker and museum, where is the furniture—in storage? The bareness does show off the old timber and beam architectural style.”
“Whatever furnishing had been here were ‘liberated’ by islanders or cottagers years before. I have it on good authority that if you take tea with some of the families on the island, you’ll be sipping from and probably sitting on items from here.”
“Maybe the keeper took away his things when the lighthouse shut down.”
“No. It’s a safe bet that the last lighthouse keeper didn’t take anything, besides his own life.”