Eden

Eden is a complex novel that explores the devastating nature of secrets as a silent conspiracy between generations and the power of love to overcome.

On a hot, muggy afternoon, in Eden, a tiny, rural town deep in southeast Louisiana, two boys make a hideous discovery; the decades-old remains of a girl, strands of hair and clothing still attached to the bones.

Meanwhile, in California, forty-one-year-old Evelyn Yates, a single mother, struggles to maintain psychological equilibrium despite the alcohol, a difficult teenage daughter, and her own traumatic past. Evelyn is devastated by a phone call from the Eden coroner informing her officials that the remains may be those of her sister, who disappeared over thirty years earlier.

Evelyn, who has mentally reduced her childhood to a series of blotchy and painful memories, fled Eden years ago and has no desire to return. Her fragile internal world is suddenly threatened with collapse by this discovery and the pressure to return home to help identify the remains.

The discovery of the body sets in motion a series of events leading inevitably to uncovering secrets dating back nearly a century; terrible events may involve Eden's entire town. As Evelyn pursues the answers to the mysteries presented, she finds her sanity, her life, and the life of her daughter threatened. Ultimately she must peel back the layers of her own consciousness, face her memories, and delve deeper into painful questions about her sister, her own mother, and finally herself.