Wormwood (China Bayles Mystery)
Books / Hardcover
Books › Fiction › Mystery & Detective › General
ISBN: 0425226093 / Publisher: Berkley Hardcover, April 2009
While getting some much needed rest and assisting with some herbal workshops, China Bayles stumbles over old secrets in a Kentucky Shaker village after a shocking death occurs during her stay.
Read More
China isn't anxious to leave her herb shop in the Texas Hill Country for two whole weeks. But her friends and family are urging her to get some rest, and a historic Shaker village in Kentucky seems the ideal place for it. At Mount Zion, China can assist her friend Martha with some herbal workshops - while absorbing the beautiful surroundings and learning about the intriguing Shaker culture, which has dwindled to near nonexistence thanks in part to their policy of strict celibacy. The Shakers were famous for their furniture and their peaceful ways, but China is more compelled by their tradition of growing and gathering medicinal herbs that they sold widely to the doctors of the time.The image of the long-lost Shaker community seems, at first, like the Garden of Eden. An apt comparison perhaps, for the old journals of the Believers reveal plenty of disobedience. As it turns out, the restored modern version of the village, striving to become a popular tourist attraction, is plagued with misfortune and strife as well - some of it the likely result of sabotage. Martha, a member of Mount Zion's board and a relative of a Shaker who left the fold long ago, is hoping China can get to the bottom of it.However, much like Shaker history itself, the case appears simpler at first than it is. There is tension behind the serene exterior. And after a shocking death occurs during her stay, China will plunge into the archives of another time to connect the sins of the past with a modern-day murder.
Read Less