Novelist Marion Mead invents worlds from her imagination. But what world invented her?
An eighteenth-century newspaper article about Susanna Grier -- a runaway Virginia wife and mother who abandoned an abusive husband to follow a criminal -- is Marion's latest inspiration. The story calls to her, resonating in some deep, forgotten corner of her soul. Now her research has drawn her to the sprawling Southern estate of Raymond Lord, and to a diary penned by the real-life Susanna's great-granddaughter, Pearl. But names and people Marion dreamed up for her novel-in-progress are inexplicably appearing in Pearl's century-old memoirs. A recurring history that always ends in tragedy and violence is slowly being revealed to her; a history that could well be Marion's future. A legacy of passion, betrayal and murder that haunts Raymond Lord is blurring the boundaries between past and present -- and it's leading them both down a strange path that defies the laws of time and the limits of memory.
From the acclaimed author of The Fourth World, Wilderness, and Circuit of Heaven comes a novel of superb craft and relentless invention; a remarkable story of lives, loves, and dark fates that intertwine through many incarnations.
