Book
Disturbing the Dead written by Sandra Parshall
About the book
Tom Bridger, who is half Melungeon, thought he had escaped his Virginia mountain community's lingering prejudice against the mixed-race group when he left to join the Richmond Police Department. Tom was moving up the detective ranks when a family tragedy brought him back home and moved him into his father's job as chief deputy in the Mason County Sheriff's Department. Now the bones of a Melungeon woman who disappeared ten years ago have surfaced on a remote mountaintop, and all evidence points to murder. Violence escalates as the victim's poor family and the wealthy white family she married into scramble to protect their secrets from Tom's scrutiny. As he probes into his father's investigation of the case, he finds his father was not the man he idolized.
The woman Tom is falling in love with, Rachel Goddard, is struggling to start a new life in a place that holds no memories for her. She puts herself in danger when she befriends the dead Melungeon woman's teenage niece, Holly. As a child, the girl witnessed something that could implicate her aunt's killer, but she is too terrified to tell anyone what she knows. While Rachel is determined to keep Holly safe and help her piece together past events, the guilty are equally determined to silence the girl -- and Rachel too, if necessary.
Will this murder investigation be Tom's and Rachel's undoing or will it free them to look to the future?
- Paperback
- 326 pages
- Published May 2008
Other books by this author
From the author
"I was born and raised in South Carolina, and the first job that paid me for writing was that of weekend obituary columnist on my hometown paper, The Spartanburg Herald. Eventually I became a reporter -- after putting together a feature on my own initiative and giving it to the editor to prove I could do it. From there I went to jobs on newspapers in West Virginia and The Baltimore Evening Sun. I covered everything from school board meetings to a mining disaster, health care in prisons, poverty in Appalachia, and the experiences of Native Americans living in the city.
I've written fiction since childhood, but I didn't find the genre I feel comfortable in -- mystery/suspense -- until a few years ago. The Heat of the Moon was my first attempt at psychological suspense. My friend Babs calls it "Sandy's pecan pie dream book" because the entire story came to me during a fitful night after I had overindulged in holiday dessert. With its publication, I'm setting off on a new phase of life, and I hope to make a lot of new friends along the way.
I've lived for many years in the Washington, DC, area, and currently share a house in McLean, Virginia, with my husband, a long-time Washington journalist, and two unbelievably spoiled cats." |
