REVIVING THE HAWTHORN SISTERS

After Eve Candler is roughed up in a cemetery, she has only three days to prove that her grandmother wasn’t a thief and a murderer.

Before she was Dove Jarrod, one of the most famous traveling faith healers of the 1930s and '40s, Eve’s grandmother was a scrappy orphan surviving by her wits and luck. By the time she was 13, she had escaped not only an asylum, but also a creepy, predatory minister. After landing a job taking care of an elderly man named Steadfast Coe, Dove is drawn into the world of itinerant preachers. She pairs up with Steadfast’s granddaughter Bruna as the Hawthorn Sisters and discovers a startling talent for faith healing. Decades later, Eve has been working with a film crew to create a documentary commemorating Dove’s life. Eve is eager for its release, hoping it will help ensure the financial footing of Dove's charitable foundation, which will support her mentally fragile mother and recovering addict brother. But a text during the dedication of the Dove Jarrod wing of a hospital lures Eve outside, where a man shoves her face into a sack of bones he claims are the remains of Steadfast Coe. He alleges that Dove killed Steadfast, stole a rare coin worth millions of dollars, and left behind a signed confession. He’s got the bones and the note, and he gives Eve just 72 hours to play detective. Deftly shifting back and forth between Eve’s and Dove’s perspectives, Carpenter slowly connects the dots between the two women as each in her own time conquers conniving men and finds a little romance, too.

An exciting, gothic-tinged quest sure to delight fans of women-driven mysteries.