Venom and the River

📖 The Scoop

A ghost writer with a secret is haunted by the fandom of a beloved children’s author in this novel by the writer of the Gracie LaRoo children’s books.
 
In the small town of Pepin, Minnesota, two very different literary legacies reside in the same house. The historic home of celebrated children’s author Ida May Turnbull is also the temporary home of Leigh Burton, a disgraced journalist who was stripped of a Pulitzer Prize for fabricating details in her stories. Now, as several hundred women converge on tiny Pepin to celebrate Ida’s birthday, the “Little Girls” bring exactly the kind of attention Leigh can’t afford to face.
 
Getting by as a freelancer since her downfall, Leigh is in Pepin to assist a former US vice president with his memoirs. Of course, no publisher would touch a piece of nonfiction with her fingerprints on it, so Leigh has to keep her past under wraps. Things get complicated when she’s gently blackmailed by a Pepin local. And they get downright difficult when Leigh’s sixteen-year-old daughter unexpectedly shows up, threatening to tell everyone Mom’s secret. The last thing she needs is to be living in the bullseye of the Little Girls’ childhood obsession. At a moment when her secret, her work, a budding romance, and her fragile relationship with her daughter are all in peril, Leigh could use a little love of her own.

Genre: Fiction / Contemporary Women (fancy, right?)