"Willa Jackson's life in Walls of Water, NC is about to be upended."

By: Sarah Addison Allen

Genres: Women's Fiction Contemporary

Posted: April 24, 2011

Willa Jackson returned to Walls of Water, North Carolina to try and live the life her father wanted her live. Willa's father passed on, leaving his aging and demented mother in Willa's care. She owns a sporting goods store in town and has settled into a quiet life visiting her grandmother and trying to make amends for the heartache she caused.

Willa's family was once one of the most socially prominent in Walls of Water. The Jackson family lost their money and their home, the Blue Ridge Madam. Willa is fascinated by the house has stayed away from it, until Paxton Osgood starts restoring it. Willa journeys up there periodically to observe the process. She is invited to the party to show off the restoration but isn't planning to attend until Paxton's brother returns to town. Colin Paxton sees her there and starts visiting Willa.

The restoration of the home will bring to light a mystery. Tucker Devlin was a silver-tongued con man who could charm any woman. When his body is discovered buried in front of the mansion with the frying pan used to kill him, Willa will be drawn into trying to discover what happened.

Willa and Paxton will become friends in a most unexpected way. Colin and Willa will explore a relationship that neither could have imagined when they were in high school.

Once again, Ms. Allen has written an off-beat story that will intrigue and delight the reader. There is always a romantic element to her books but this one contains a mystery as well with some harsh realities. This is a wonderful story populated with some unusual characters.

Book Summary

The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Chased the Moon welcomes you to her newest locale: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town’s famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.

It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal. And Willa herself has long strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow. No easy task in a town shaped by years of tradition and the well-marked boundaries of the haves and have-nots.

But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood—of the very prominent Osgood family, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn. Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes. But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree, and certain to drag up dire consequences along with it.

For the bones—those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago—are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind. Long-kept secrets surrounding the troubling remains have also come to light, seemingly heralded by a spate of sudden strange occurrences throughout the town.

Now, thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the dangerous passions and tragic betrayals that once bound their families—and uncover truths of the long-dead that have transcended time and defied the grave to touch the hearts and souls of the living.

Resonant with insight into the deep and lasting power of friendship, love, and tradition, The Peach Keeper is a portrait of the unshakable bonds that—in good times and bad, from one generation to the next—endure forever.

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

The Peach Keeper

by: Sarah Addison Allen

Bantam
April 1, 2011
On Sale: March 22, 2011
Featuring: Willa Jackson
288 pages
ISBN: 0553807226
EAN: 9780553807226
Hardcover

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