"Deep complex relationships inside a terse medical romantic thriller"

Needing to pay off her medical school bills, wannabe genetics research scientist Dr. Bridget O'Keefe signs a three contract to work at the Well Baby Clinic in Lacrimas, North Carolina. Lilith Harker takes the newcomer under her wing, providing Bridget with a guard dog and introducing the doctor to her family. That is part of her kin as she fails to present one of her two brothers, Nathaniel, who hides in plain sight from everyone.

During a routine blood sample of Lilith's younger sibling Shiloh, Bridget's genetics expertise enables her to notice anomalies. She forwards a sample to her former teacher at Duke and soon everyone is interested in what appears to be a universal donor of artificial blood. Claiming a ruse, Bridget begins investigating this genetic oddity while forging a deep friendship with her mentor and falling in love with the shadow man.

Combining deep complex relationships inside a terse medical romantic thriller, Barbara Karmazin provides her audience with a powerful tale of the impact of a welcomed outsider on a closely knit Southern family. Bridget is a great protagonist who struggles between a discovery that feels to her like betrayal and joining the group that has welcomed her as a full blooded member. Besides loving the name Lilith Harker, readers, who are unaware of Ms. Karmazin, need to obtain this fine book and DOWN CAME A BLACKBIRD as both are great novels.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 23, 2003

Summary

BRIDGET O'KEEFE has her entire life planned down to the last detail. She'll complete a three-year contract with the small town of Lacrimas, North Carolina and wipe out the enormous school debts she incurred to become a physician. Afterwards, she'll have her pick of any genetics lab in the country for full time research. She doesn't need any personal entanglements with the Harkers, a strange and reclusive family who own a thirty-mile section of swampland near Lacrimas.

Little by little, they pull her into their lives and into a mystery that stretches back to the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island and the mists of prehistory where myths and legends walked hand in hand with humanity.