Renee Ross Books

When Katie McCarthy accepts a housekeeping position at Hawthorne House, she hopes it will provide stability for her two-year-old daughter. Instead, the death of the family matriarch exposes the secret Blanche Hawthorne spent decades trying to bury.

A child stolen from his mother.
An innocent woman confined.
And a man from the past whom Blanche tried to erase.

As the truth comes to light, old loyalties fracture, and long-silenced voices demand to be heard.

Drawn ever deeper into the family’s reckoning, Katie fights to help the people she has come to care for recover everything Blanche took from them—including one another.

But after decades of lies, is the truth enough to make them whole?

A gripping gothic family drama of mothers and sons, forbidden love, buried secrets, and the courage it takes to begin again.