Dixie Land. Grave Secrets. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Books, 2008.

Susan Slade grew up feeling secure and loved.  Her parents were attentive and supportive, and Susan had a close relationship with her Aunt Lois and a foster sister, Krystal.  Wes Marshall had been Susan’s boyfriend since high school, and the two seem headed toward marriage.

As Grave Secrets opens, all that is unraveling.  Susan’s father has been dead a year, and her mother has just died.  Susan is beginning to have the same nightmare she had when she was a young girl, a nightmare in which she is a little child, cold and alone in a dark, small space.  Seeking solace, Susan returns to her parents’ house.  There she finds documents that seem to indicate that she was informally adopted–possible bought–by the people she always thought were her parents.  Susan’s first impulse is to ask Aunt Lois what she knows, but when Aunt Lois commits suicide and then Krystal takes a drug overdose, Susan realizes that she must solve this mystery on her own.  Her quest for the truth has consequences for her relationships with Wes and Krystal, but by the end of the novel most of the characters are at peace with the past and ready for a brighter future.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Comments Off on Dixie Land. Grave Secrets. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Books, 2008.

Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Coast, Land, Dixie, Mystery, Suspense/Thriller

Comments are closed.