Ebony Swan

by Phyllis A Whitney

Family secrets are locked away at the intimidating Virginia estate of a prima ballerina in this suspenseful tale from a New York Times-bestselling author.

Susan Prentice is a young nurse at a crossroads. She's broken off an engagement, the father who raised her has just died, and now she's leaving the western shores behind for a trip to her family's home on Virginia's Northern Neck-where she saw her mother fall to her death twenty-five years ago. There, Susan's grandmother, former ballet diva Alexandrina "Alex" Vargas Montoro, proves a formidable sentinel for the family's mysterious history.

At first welcomed by her long-estranged relatives, spied on by suspicious neighbors, and drawn to Peter, Alex's handsome young doctor, Susan has nothing but questions. And for every answer, there's a warning-and the fear that she has only Peter to trust in. But even the doctor's past is shaded with murder. Soon Susan will discover that she alone holds the key to her mother's suspicious death, hidden away in her shattered memories. And someone intimately close to her is prepared to bury the truth forever.

• ISBN10: 0385424434
• ISBN13: 9780385424431
• Publish Date: 1 May 1992
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Out of Print: 19 July 2011
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Doubleday Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 269
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

If reviews came with musical accompaniment, you'd be hearing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah as you read this.  I've finally finished this book.   There's a combination of factors involved in the blame for my incredibly slow progress: I'm in a slump, and therefore easily distracted by anything right now - it doesn't even have to be shiny; life has been busy and when I did sit down to read, interruptions abounded; this is not Whitney's best work.  By a long shot.   Susan's father took her away from her grandmother's home and cut off all contact, after the death of her mother under mysterious circumstances.  Susan was the only witness and at 5, suppressed the memories.  Now her father's dead, she's an adult, and she's returning to her grandmother's home in Virginia to get to know her and figure out why she can't remember her own mother.  But grandma has a trunk-load of secrets she's less than enthusiastic about sharing, and nobody else seems to want Susan to come back at all.    This is one of Whitney's later books, written in the 80's, and she's still got her magic touch when it comes to atmosphere, setting, and characters.  But the story dragged... the pacing was continental drift slow, and there was so much time spent in the heads of the characters, it was a challenge to keep myself engaged.  And when everything came together with a solution/ending that was twisted in that way in which Whitney excelled (this is an author who really understood long-simmering anger and epic grudges), I was so ...exhausted by the slow pacing that I just couldn't feel the punch I should have.    It's good, it's even a bit haunting, but you have to really be patient with it, and in the midst of a slump, patience is thin on the ground.