"Gripping page-turner!"

Three years ago, Dara Prince, privileged daughter of Ames Prince, supposedly ran away. The only things giving her father hope through the years have been the occasional postcards from around the world, signed with only a "D."

One of Ames' wards, Christine Ireland, has never accepted that Dara merely ran away, mostly because of the many things she left behind, one of which was her beloved cat, Rhiannon. Therefore, when a body washes up during an annual flood, Christine has few doubts about its identity. Her major fears rest with the opinions of the sheriff and many of the townspeople, who feel her brother, Jeremy, a person of diminished capacities, had something to do with the disappearance. Christine spends time helping the police with her insights into Dara's activities, keeping her brother calm and occupied during this period of upheaval and becoming ever more suspicious of her friends' and neighbors' activities.

In the tradition of Tami Hoag or Mary Higgins Clark, Thompson creates a gripping page-turner. The storyline is engaging and the characters' lives are multi-dimensional. This is literally a book the reader will be unable to put down.

Reviewed by Vicky Gilpin
Courtesy Old Book Barn Gazette
Posted December 26, 2003

Summary

Three years have passed since erotic, willful Dara Prince disappeared from Winston, West Virginia, leaving a note saying she's run away. Now a body has been found in the creek. A body, Christine Ireland suspects, that could very well belong to her adopted sister Dara. Deputy Sheriff Michael Winter certainly seems to think so. But if Dara's dead, who's been sending Ames prince the letters he cherishes: always with a different postmark and always signed with his missing daughter's initial? When Dara's diary turns up unexpectedly, Christine is plunged into her lost sister's dark and mysterious world. Clearly, in the days before her disappearance, Dara was certain somebody was stalking her. As past melds hauntingly with present, people who knew Dara are meeting tragic fates. Now, someone is watching Christine's every move-- perhaps just the way they once watched Dara, right before she died. If, indeed, she really did die...