Leigh Girard, a Chicago native, has fled to Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, a remote artist community on the Door County peninsula, to heal from her recent mastectomy. "Cancer does that - yanks you out of your life," she observes with her usual wryness. Determined to start a new life, she has left her troubled marriage and teaching career to take a job as a reporter with the Door County Gazette. Her first assignment: an obituary. While investigating a wrongful death claim by Eva Peck, the widow of a restoration craftsman, Leigh suspects that Carl Peck didn't die of natural causes, but was murdered. When it's discovered that Peck, an amateur naturalist, died from mushroom poisoning, Leigh's suspicions are confirmed. Yet, according to the locals, murder just doesn't happen here. The case turns even more puzzling when Peck's daughter attempts suicide a week after her friend, the local librarian, kills herself. In the process of solving Peck's murder, Leigh uncovers another murder committed twenty years earlier that links the past with the present. Her obsession with finding the connection between these two murders puts her in conflict with the community and eventually jeopardizes her life. Confronted once again with her own mortality, Leigh finally faces the emotional scar left by her mastectomy.
Gail Lukasik was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She lives in Libertyville, Illinois, with her husband and their Shetland sheepdog.
