What should have been a nice escape to teach a poetry class in a lovely location on the water becomes a mystery. People are dying and that includes a long time friend. Maria can't help but stick her nose into the rash of deaths. Even she is targeted when her cabin is broken into. Trouble is afoot. Adding to the story is the emotions from her lover's indiscretion. She finds a man of interest. Where will that lead?
The story was interesting, the outcome was unexpected. I enjoyed the book.

This book touches on some important current issues with sensitivity and it is good to see fiction authors try to address these even as they seek to entertain. It is quite a short book but the author manages to instil a strong understanding of the characters and their relationships. The paranormal angle was not as big a part of this book’s appeal for me as I thought it would be as I found the relationships to be so compelling,

This is really a book you reading. Maria Pell moves to a part of the low country in South Carolina for a summer to teach a poetry class. The area is beautiful and everyone seems friendly but there is an undercurrent that is quite different. Things start happening soon after Maria's arrival. Murder, and racial tensions run rampant
Even though this is a short novel there's a lot going on! I highly recommend!

Distraught over her partner’s betrayal, poet Maria Pell (no stranger to paranormal phenomena) flees to a writers’ retreat in a small North Carolina coastal town—a place where racial tensions seethe and river mists and blind reverence for old traditions hide secrets of the living and the dead.
Maria plunges straight into these mysteries as she searches for the woman who inspired verses written by a deceased local poet. At the same time her writer friend and fellow retreat instructor, Bo Bennett’s research into a local family uncovers that someone is the killing descendants of a seventeenth century slave-owner. Could the murders be retribution for past sins or are they cover for more recent, sinister motives? The poems and Bo’s discoveries combine to solve old mysteries and forever change the way people regard themselves in this barrier island community. Everything about this story give me the shivers! READ THIS!!…

For a short book there was so much packed into this story from mystery and murder to romance, betrayal to family dynamics and racial tensions/race relataions. It was such an engaging read that I read this in one very short sitting. Definitely worth reading.