After the sudden death of her beloved uncle and guardian, Jeb, Candace "Candy" Taylor heads to the Canadian wilderness where her uncle's home and logging mill* is located.
Candy finds herself temporarily stranded at a small airport on the last leg of her trip but the airport employee manages to arrange a flight for her with Dr. Clint Williams, a cranky and bitter man with a unkempt beard and hair who has his own plane he takes to his cabin upriver from the mill. Clint harshly tells Candy her uncle was murdered in a intentional accident shocking Candy who had assumed it was a sudden heart attack that took him.
Once at her uncles house Candy meets the people that live there:
Jim, the best friend of Candy's uncle who she quickly begins referring to as Uncle Jim. He is now handling the running of the mill and with no family left Candy looks to him as a father figure.
Rick, a former juvenile delinquent. Rick was in trouble with the law for killing someone in a street fight when uncle Jeb found him and worked with the courts to get custody of him. Jeb took him under his wing and the two shared a father/son relationship. Jeb believed Rick and Candy would make suitable spouses for each other, even though they had yet to meet, and had spoken this thought to both of them.
Nora, an extremely beautiful but bitter woman who works there as a nurse. She has taken the job in this isolated area only because she cannot find work elsewhere due to being deregistered after being caught stealing drugs and selling them on the streets. She's not a very good nurse but needed in the last few months since Clint closed down his practice, which was the only hospital in the area.
Larry, a former junkie that had been in trouble with the law. The same as Rick, Jeb had gotten custody of Larry and employed him as a book keeper hoping to help get him on his feet.
Sam, a very skilled and talented cook that cannot find employment elsewhere due to his mature age (79). Jeb has hired him to help him with employment and as a treat for the loggers who don't have much to look forward to after work except a delicious meal.
Joe, a member of the local tribe that Jeb hired to assist Sam in the kitchen. Jeb has also been paying for Joe to attend law school. Joe has recently left school to take care of his ill mother who cannot receive proper care since Clint closed the hospital.
Clint, although he lives up river, often stays at Jeb's house when it is too late to return home or the weather does not allow it. Clint is a doctor that had a practice in the nearby town but shut it down after his wife's murder. His wife, Jenny, was the daughter of his mentor and very mentally ill. She would routinely make attempts on her life and once on Clint's life. Clint married her after her father's passing to keep her out of a mental institution. One night while Clint was working Jenny was stabbed on the street. She was brought to the hospital and although Clint tried his best to save her she did not survive. With rumors that Clint murdered her he has closed his practice and moved to his weekend cabin in the woods while people claim he is losing his mind. On her first time there Candy is warned to look out for Clint since she bares a striking resemblance to his deceased wife.
Sitting by the fireplace that evening Nora spooks Candy with a story about the wife of the previous house owner who died after falling down the stairs. Disturbed by the story Candy is comforted by Rick who clearly has a romantic interest in her which Candy reciprocates.
That night Candy awakes to find her door open, terrifying her that someone was in her room while she was unconscious and vulnerable. When she gets up to close the door she sees the ghostly image of a woman walking down the stairs then hears a scream. Before she can follow the apparition she is strangled from behind and passes out. She awakens to Rick worriedly carrying her to bed and tells him she must have fainted. After all, if there had been a ghostly figure and scream, wouldn't Rick have heard it?
The next day Jim takes Candy around to see the land she now owns. He takes her up to the hill where Jeb was buried and as they stand there Jim is shot in the leg by an unknown assailant. Candy runs to notify Rick and Nora and then decides she should get Clint too. She boats up river to his cabin but he's not home so she sits down to wait but falls asleep. Clint is angry to find her there but runs to help Jim when she tells him what has happened.
With some medical treatment Jim is going to be fine but more bad luck strikes that evening when a supply shed explodes. Someone apparently lit dynamite that was stored in it. Candy is discouraged but vows not to give up on her Uncle's mill.
That night Clint sneaks into Candy's room and tells her Rick murdered Jeb and to be cautious of him. Candy believes more than ever that Clint is losing his mind from the grief of his wife's death.
The next day Joe takes Candy to visit his mother. He hopes that seeing her will encourage Candy to try and persuade Clint to reopen the hospital. As the two are walking back home in the evening someone begins shooting at them. Joe instructs Candy to get down on the ground while he tries to hunt down the shooter. When he doesn't return after a considerable amount of time Candy gets up and begins running in a panic, unsure of where she is or how to get home. She sits down to cry and falls asleep before Rick finds her. With all the dangerous happening Rick insists they be married right away so he can take care of and protect Candy. She accepts his proposal before they head back to the mill and Candy is delivered more bad news.
While out, the payroll had been stolen from the office and Sam had been badly beaten. With no money to be payed the loggers all quit. Rick says he can hire new workers the next day when they go into town for a marriage license. Rick also insists it was Joe who committed these crimes and shows some prejudice against natives.
The next morning Clint flies Candy and Rick to town where they apply for a marriage license and Rick has Candy transfer her holdings to his name so he can pay for new employees. While Rick goes off to hire new loggers Candy meets Clint back at the plane for lunch. She is shocked to see Clint has shaved and cut his hair, revealing that he is actually very handsome.
He takes Candy to his house in town, which has laid abandoned since his wife's death and tells her the truth: he's not losing his mind, he's simply pretending to so he can try and hunt down his wife's killer. He believes the killer was a logger as they were in town celebrating payday on that night. So he has pretended to be reclusive as a way to hang around the mill and pretended to be losing his mind in the hopes the killer would be less on guard and more likely to slip up. He tells Candy he believes all the strange incidents are related and that Rick is behind them.
Rick had been furious at the reading of Jeb's will when he found out Candy would be inheriting the land and not him. At the time he had also made derogatory remarks about Candy which makes his sudden romantic interest in her more suspicious. It doesn't help that he and Nora were dating right up until Candy arrived when they suddenly seemed to cut it off. Candy believes him and the two agree to be on their guard from here on out before Candy kisses Clint.
When they arrive back at Clint's plane Larry is there and tells them Rick is going to be late and to head home without him. Once in the sky the plane begins to malfunction, clearly having been tampered with, and crashes. Clint is unconscious and bleeding from his head. Candy is conscious but has a serious shoulder injury. Determined to save Clint, Candy wanders, injured, through the forest until she reaches the mill. She runs into the office to find Rick, Nora, and Larry.
With no prompting Rick begins explaining their plan: Rick had killed Jeb because he believed he was the main beneficiary on his will. After finding out almost everything went to Candy and not him he planned to cause Candy emotional distress so he could manipulate her into signing everything over to him under the promise of marriage. Then he would kill her and own everything. Larry is the one who killed Jenny. Mistakenly believing she had a key to the hospital's drug supply, and needing a fix, he held her up at knife point but didn't expect her to attack him in response. Under attack he stabbed her. Rick witnessed the stabbing and helped Larry create an alibi so he could blackmail him into helping with the murder of the others. Nora is helping because she wants a cut of the money and because she's gaga over Rick.
Jim then arrives and Candy is heartbroken to learn he too was involved in the murder of her uncle. Rick explains he now plans to lock her up in the house, where he currently has Joe imprisoned, and light it on fire, setting up evidence to incriminate Joe simply because he hates all natives due to the fact that he himself is half native. His father abandoned the family leaving them poor and on the street which caused him to want revenge on all natives and this is further triggered when he gets jealous Jeb is paying for Joe to go to law school (I dunno, his motive is a whole twisted mess of greed, racism, and daddy issues).
Suddenly Clint shows up with a shotgun and the scene changes to Clint, Candy, and Joe about to leave the mill after the police have hauled off the bad guys. Candy and Clint are to be married, Clint will reopen his hospital meaning Joe can return to school, and Candy will run the mill.
*I use the word mill but I don't think it's actually a mill. It's just land where the trees are grown and cut. I don't know what else to call it.
- Rick justifies Clint murdering his wife and Candy does not find this disturbing.
- I found it strange and a bit incredulous that Candy fell asleep after both times she was shot at.
- In my notes I wrote "Did the author not research natives at all? No tribe mentioned just vague stereotypes". Joe is going to law school so he can fight for the rights of his people against "the whites" but like what exactly? Couldn't some issues have been named or at least Joe's tribe?
- I liked that Jenny had attacked Larry when he pulled a knife on her but I wasn't the biggest fan of how Jenny's mental illness was handled. It says she would try to take her own life or threaten suicide but then it also says she would cry to Clint about him working all the time and not spending any time with her. She was also "running away" when she was stabbed on the street so was Clint maybe causing his wife mental distress and she was trying to leave him? At the end of the book Candy does imply she will have to give up the mill to be his wife but Clint tells her hey, maybe it would be fun to have this wife work and not go crazy home alone all day. I didn't like that.
Also she's called a "psychopath" when the things mentioned are not signs of psychopathy. More likely signs of a mood disorder like depression or bipolar. And like I said before, people think there is justification for if Clint did kill his wife to be rid of her or be with someone else.
- Interestingly enough the last book I read also had a male villain attempting to commit murder because of his daddy issues.
Overall it was good. A quick little thriller and another Avalon book down.
