Jess Montgomery’s Kinship Series

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The Echoes is the fourth book in Jess Montgomery’s Kinship series, set in the 1920s in Ohio. She recently appeared for a virtual event to discuss the book with Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen. You can order a signed copy through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3JbAilH

Here’s the summary of The Echoes.

The fourth in Jess Montgomery’s evocative Kinship series, The Echoes combines exquisite storytelling with extraordinary crime plotting.

“A beautifully written tour de force.” —Linda Castillo on The Stills

As July 4, 1928 approaches, Sheriff Lily Ross and her family look forward to the opening of an amusement park in a nearby town, created by Chalmer Fitzpatrick—a veteran and lumber mill owner. When Lily is alerted to the possible drowning of a girl, she goes to investigate, and discovers schisms going back several generations, in an ongoing dispute over the land on which Fitzpatrick has built the park.

Lily’s family life is soon rattled, too, with the revelation that before he died, her brother had a daughter, Esme, with a woman in France, and arrangements have been made for Esme to immigrate to the U.S. to live with them. But Esme never makes it to Kinship, and soon Lily discovers that she has been kidnapped. Not only that, but a young woman is indeed found murdered in the fishing pond on Fitzpatrick’s property, at the same time that a baby is left on his doorstep.

As the two crimes interweave, Lily must confront the question of what makes family: can we trust those we love? And what do we share, and what do we keep secret?

JESS MONTGOMERY writes a Writer’s Digest magazine column, “Level Up Your Writing (Life)” and was formerly the “Literary Life” columnist for the Dayton Daily News. Based on early chapters of the first book in the Kinship Series, The Widows, Jess was awarded an Ohio Arts Council individual artist’s grant for literary arts and named the John E. Nance Writer-in-Residence at Thurber House in Columbus. She also hosts the podcast, “Tea with Jess: Chatting with Authors & Artists.” Jess lives in her native state of Ohio.

Here’s the virtual event in which Jess Montgomery talks about her books, including The Echoes.