The Artist of Blackberry Grange
In Kansas City in 1925, twenty-eight-year-old Sadie Halloran finds herself jilted by her lover and penniless. Upon learning that her wealthy, childless great aunt Marguerite is in failing health, Sadie travels to the dying woman’s Missouri estate, named Blackberry Grange. Claiming she wants to care for Marguerite, Sadie hides her ulterior motive—to inherit the property. She befriends Marguerite’s maid, nurse, and the attractive gardener, Beckett.
While snooping through the house, Sadie finds pictures that Marguerite painted over the decades, portraying her many lovers and her two deceased sisters. Examining the paintings, Sadie is pulled into a time-slip existence, moving between the present 1925, and the early 1880s when Marguerite and her sisters, then of marriageable age, fight with each other over suitors. Sadie encounters ghosts that haunt the house, including one who is particularly lascivious, as well as curses that cross generations. Mystery piles on mystery until Sadie, with help from dying Marguerite, uncovers the truth about her heritage and herself. Along the way, as Sadie faces the ups and downs of her romance with Beckett, she must decide how much to tell him about her alternate existence.
With Sadie, Kennedy has created an appealing character whose change from selfishness to empathy, at the heart of the book, will keep readers’ interest. Despite this strength, the book’s pace tapers off in the middle, with too many ghosts pulling too many strings. Readers who love time-slip novels, dual time-line novels, ghost stories, and haunted house tales will admire the novel. Others may wish for fewer curses or less malevolent ghosts.
