In this compulsively-readable historical novel, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Two Sisters, comes the story of two young women--one in America's Gilded Age, one in scrappy modern-day California--whose lives are linked by a single tragic afternoon in history.
1888: Elizabeth Haberlin, of the Pittsburgh Haberlins, spends every summer with her family on a beautiful lake in an exclusive club. Nestled in the Allegheny Mountains above the working class community of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the private retreat is patronized by society's elite. Elizabeth summers with Carnegies, Mellons, and Fricks, following the rigid etiquette of her class. But Elizabeth is blessed (cursed) with a mind of her own. Case in point: her friendship with Eugene Eggar, a Johnstown steel mill worker. And when Elizabeth discovers that the club's poorly maintained dam is about to burst and send 20 million tons of water careening down the mountain, she risks all to warn Eugene and the townspeople in the lake's deadly shadow.
Present day: On her eighteenth birthday, genetic information from Lee Parker's closed adoption is unlocked. She also sees an old photograph of a genetic relative--a 19th Century woman with hair and eyes likes hers--standing in a pile of rubble from an ecological disaster next to none other than Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross. Determined to identify the woman in the photo and unearth the mystery of that captured moment, Lee digs into history. Her journey takes her from California to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, from her present financial woes to her past of privilege, from the daily grind to an epic disaster. Once Lee's heroic DNA is revealed, will she decide to forge a new fate?
- ISBN10 1410495167
- ISBN13 9781410495167
- Publish Date 21 December 2016 (first published 14 June 2016)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 26 March 2022
- Imprint Thorndike Press
- Edition Large type / large print edition
- Format Hardcover
- Language English