Createspace, 2013
ISBN-13: 978-1482032314
Available: Paperback, Kindle ebook
Sycamore Grove High school athlete Daniel Townsend helps his basketball team win the state championship. He is going to go Ole Miss on an athletic scholarship. Then Daniel and his family find out his father, Donald, has inoperable lung cancer. This upsets Daniel, as the Townsend family is very close-knit, being from the south, and family is very important. Daniel makes a decision to help his father, which results in Daniel’s death. Daniel’s girlfriend, Angela Chadwick, and her friend Marc Livingston decide to get to the bottom of what happened to Daniel. Marc and Angela meet an old man named Jonas Barloff, who is apparently living in the abandoned Barloff home. Marc discovers a tombstone bearing Jonas’s name, with a strange epitaph on it that makes no sense at the time, but as the story goes on, it becomes all too clear.
This book is fast paced. The characters are likable, and you feel bad for Daniel, since he really wants to help his father, but it doesn’t work out the way he planned it. Jonas Barloff is also an interesting character, with a backstory relating to the Civil War and the battles of Fredricksburg and Gettysburg. There is also a hell of a twist ending that I didn’t see coming, and I’m usually pretty good at spotting those. Highly recommended.
Contains: grave robbing
Reviewed by: Diana Lord