Received this book from a friend. I've read other books by this author and enjoyed them.

Hardback with dust cover

A minister leaves his church on a spiritual quest after Alice Hayward, one of his parishioners is found strangled to death in her home, alongside her dead husband with a gun in his hand, evidence of a murder-suicide. Told in different perspectives by Stephen Drew, the minister; Catherine Benincasa, the state’s attorney investigating the case; Heather Laurent, an author who comes to town and wants to know more about the deceased; and Katie, teen-age daughter of the Haywards, who had seen her mother physically abused by her father for years.

Each narrator has a distinctly unique voice and, through their words, the author reveals their complex personalities. The superior character development, combined with mounting elements of mystery and suspense, resulted in a book I didn’t want to put down.

Sent to NancyNova in Pennsylvania, a winner in my 70th Birthday RABCK. Enjoy!

I've read a lot by this author & have loved the stories. Adding to my TBR sooner shelf and will try to move this along by a rabck. Thank you!

If you aren't familiar with Bookcrossing, take a few minutes to check out this very cool site. Bookcrossers LOVE books, and more than anything, they love to read books and then set them free for other people to find and enjoy. I would love it if you would leave a journal entry -- you can say where you found the book or how you liked it when you read it. Then, when you are ready, pass it along for someone else to enjoy!
Thanks and happy reading!

One of the three RABK books to have arrived together yesterday, sent generously by NancyNova. I have enjoyed several Chris Bohjalian books and am sure I will like this one as well. The upcoming summer is burgeoning with books to be read!

adding my review info, which I forgot to document before I sent to book along!

rabck from pinklady60; good book that had me guessing until the end. A couple is found in what appears to be a murder-suicide, but was it really? Told in alternating viewpoints, of the pastor, an author, the investigator and the teenage daughter, it kept me in suspense.

I have read several Chris Bohjalian novels, and I enjoyed Secrets of Eden (this title is part of a conversation late in the book in which the main protagonist, the Reverend Stephen Drew, says that there were no secrets in Eden). The book opens with Drew's full-immersion baptism in the river of Alice Hayward, a parishioner whom everybody knows is an abused wife. Later that night, her husband kills her, and (maybe) commits suicide. We learn very early (so no spoiler) that Stephen Drew had had a brief affair with Alice. He leaves the small Vermont town after her funeral, his faith too sorely tested. Before leaving, however, a well-known author (although not to him) named Heather Laurent comes to comfort him. She has a story very similar to Katie Hayward, the surviving 15 year-old daughter, in that her father also killed her mother and then himself. She was saved by the recognition that angels exist among us, in reality, and that is the basis of her writings. Enter the fray with Catherine Benincasa, the state attorney, who comes to understand that Alice's husband did not commit suicide but was murdered, and she is sure it was Stephen Drew who did it. The novel is divided into four sections, each of which is narrated in the first person by one of these four main characters (Drew, Benincasa, Laurent and Katie). Bohjalian has a wonderful style that keeps the story flowing all through. No "real" evidence comes to light to prove Drew's guilt, and as a reader, I certainly didn't want it to be him, but I couldn't figure out how this would end up until the final pages. Other readers may totally condemn him for having an affair with a parishioner and so might truly want him to be skewered. This makes it an interesting novel, wouldn't you say?

on the bench near the entrances