Publisher's Synopsis
Inspired by the beauty and culture of old California, author Louise Schwartz's debut novel is a story of murder and revenge set in high society with weavings of Anglo, Spanish, and Chumash Indian cultures. In Montecito, settings now lost to history become the gardens of discovery. In 1962, Emma Chase returns from France to her grandmother's home in Montecito, California, for her husband's ashes. Harry was murdered, stabbed to death, his body found on the railroad tracks--without fingers. Emma leaves Paris and her husband's sinister friends behind and returns home resolved to find the murderer. At home with her grandmother, Emma is pulled back into a world of privilege and secrecy. In research archives on another Montecito estate she finds secrets of a Chumash Indian society that have too much to do with her husband's murder. Emma meets the families tied to the land, finds suitors and sex, murder and international secrets. Finally, with the help of a local police detective, Emma makes her way through the dense foliage of Montecito, of family, of history, to the murder itself.
