Of Time and Sin

Sometimes, when love and sin are involved, murder is not far behind. The Westover House, abandoned fully furnished 70 years ago, is an antiques lover’s dream for Dean and Katie Smyth. The hidden secrets and ghosts residing in the house soon turn those dreams into nightmares when the couple discovers a body at the base of the mansion’s gracefully curving staircase and are pulled into a ring of sex, blackmail, and kidnapping. As they struggle to discover who the murder victim was, the old Victorian house gives up the secret of why the last owner took her children and fled from despair into madness.

About the Author

From the arrowheads he collected as a young boy, to a walnut carpenter's plane used to build the state capital, to a leather billfold with a $5 bill dated 1835 from the Manhattan Bank, author Dennis Swan is surrounded by history. When he retired from being a rural mail carrier, and he and his wife Kathi retired from running an antique shop in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, Dennis began a writing career at his home, the Walworth House, surrounded by their antiques and his family heirlooms. Of the history that inspires him, none is more potent than his family's own. Dennis writes at the desk that his grandfather did his homework on at the 250-acre family farm were Dennis has lived his entire life. Every morning over coffee, Dennis can see from his own kitchen window the brick houses his ancestors made generations ago. Dennis always helped decorate his family's graves on Memorial Day and grew up listening to the stories of his ancestor's dealings with the early Native Americans, fighting in the Civil War, and how his great-great-grandfather, Wesley, fought at Fox's Gap in the Battle of the South Mountain. Although Wesley had to bury his brother John in a military cemetery in Kentucky, Wes was lucky to come back with just a musket ball embedded in his shoulder. He married a neighborhood girl and built a brick farmhouse where Dennis' cousin now lives. Dennis' great-grandfather built a log cabin when he married and replaced it with the second brick farmhouse Dennis looks upon today. From the antiques surrounding him to the monuments of his ancestors around his home, history is infused into the life Dennis lives, and he sees the struggles of these early Americans as clear as day and brings those stories to life through his writing.

Reviews

News