The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton #theclockmakersdaughter @katemortonauthor #mystery #love #murder #ghosts #chesapeakepubliclibrary @absltmom

and here we are once again!     Welcome to Monday and yes, this Monday means that Thanksgiving is only three days away! Time to crank up and get moving as we get to celebrate America’s holiday!

Today I am reviewing the book,

For those of us who have loved Kate Morton’s books this one is a treat to behold. She is back mesmerizing us and making us feel ever so present in the pages, the characters, and the places she writes of.

Edward Radcliff is an artist who spies a beautiful red haired woman and falls for her as both the woman he eventually loves and as his muse. Her name is Birdie Bell and she has had a sad and somewhat checkered past but she inspires Edward and as they venture to his home Birchwood Manor, we venture into a house that hold many secrets and lives within its history. It is a house spun by dreams, haunted by memories, propelled by expectancy.

Years later, Elodie Winslow, an archivist, and while researching James Stratton, finds a leather bag which contains both a sketchbook with a drawing of a home near a river, plus the photograph of a Victorian woman. These two things begin to haunt Elodie as she feels a connection to this home. Elodie is driven to explore, find, and discover what it is that makes this house, this drawing, become a part of her own personal story.

Told through many different narratives, Kate Morton is able to weave a story of love, of murder, and the fates that awaited both Edward and Birdie in a house that seemed to hold mystery and haunting. Making the house and what it knows and holds within its walls a central focus of this story gives the book an enigmatic, mystical feel bringing together the lives of the people who once lived there and those people who presently come to know this home. Written as a lyrical mesmerizing tale, Kate Morton is able to bring together a well written mystifying tale that entraps the reader into a world where suspense, expectancy, and magic prevail.

“I wanted you to see what a balm love is. What it is to share one’s life, to really share it, so that very little matters outside the certainty of its walls. Because the world is very noisy, Elodie, and although life is filled with joy and wonder, there’s evil and sorrow and injustice, too.”