This book, while brimming with possibility, is a promise unfulfilled.A young woman, Lucy, returns from Japan to her upstate New York home, actually a Victorian mansion by The Lake of Dreams, a place from which she has distanced herself since her father’s death. As she adjusts to the changes about her she finds some old documents in a locked window seat, documents that soon reveal an unknown family history.
Having once discovered the old documents Lucy then shares her find with her Mother who just happens to remember that over twenty years ago she found an old baby blanket, with a note that matches the handwriting on the documents. A beautiful blanket with a pattern on it that was tucked away twenty years ago and not thought of again until just now. And so the plot advances. Lucy becomes obsessed with the long lost owner of the documents and the pattern woven into the blanket which just happens to be a recurring pattern in a stained glass window that her once upon a time boyfriend Keegan Fall is restoring. Naturally this discovery leads her to more stained glass windows and convinces her that the owner of the documents could very well be the woman depicted in the windows, which of course take her off to find out more about the artist. Biff, boom, bang more connections are made.
While all of this is happening Lucy is coming to terms with the guilt she has carried all these years about her father’s death and struggling with her newly awakened feelings for her long lost love Keegan and worrying about her mixed feelings for her current fellow, Yoshi, due to arrive any day now from Japan. Good lord can this plot get any weaker? Spoiler alert……. it can.
Beyond all the astoundingly weak plot forwarding devices, the biggest problem I had with this is that the protagonist does not act the way a real person would, ever. She is in good company though as most of the other characters are equally unbelievable. Case in point - Lucy learns that her father’s brother Art was complicit in her dad’s death. He was there out on the lake arguing with him that fateful night. Heated words are exchanged and Art pushes his brother who falls out of the boat. Art tries to find him and when he is unsuccessful just leaves and never mentions this to anyone. So Lucy vandalizes his store and then shares this information with her family. There is no outrage, just disbelief from her brother and a quiet acceptance from her Mother. Everybody remembers how kind Art has been over the years since his brother’s death. Seriously……that’s it.
I have been thinking about time well spent. That was not the case here.