Alafair Tucker is a strong woman and the core of her family?s life on a farm in Oklahoma where backbreaking work and the daily logistics of caring for her husband and their nine children and of being a good neighbor requires determination and a clear head. She?s also a woman of strong opinions and it is her opinion that her neighbor Harley Day is a drunkard and a reprobate. So when Harley?s body is discovered frozen in a snowdrift one January day in 1912 she isn?t surprised that his long-suffering family isn?t particularly broken up.
When Alafair helps Harley?s wife prepare the body for burial she discovers that Harley?s demise was anything but natural: there is a bullet lodged behind his ear. And when she hears that Harley?s son John Lee is the prime suspect in his father?s murder she grows concerned?her seventeen-year-old daughter Phoebe is in love with the boy. At first Alafair?s only fear is that Phoebe is in for a broken heart but as she begins to unravel the events that led to Harley?s death she discovers that Phoebe might be more than just John Lee?s sweetheart: she may be his accomplice in murder. But a man like Harley turns many people against him and whoever said there are some things even a mother can?t fix never met Alafair Tucker.
Pitch-perfect for the Oklahoma frontier Donis Casey?s first novel in the Alafair Tucker mystery series is both a compelling mystery and a remarkable evocation of the hard work and family joys of life one hundred years ago.
