"A Sound Among The Trees" by Susan Meissner

The macabre undertone of the title and the illustration on the book's cover  are sure to lead the readers to believe this is is a ghost story.  Such was my initial thought; but I was wrong.  The story revolved around a family whose members were thrown together by circumstances rather than by blood relationship and the mystery of a house's past resident.  It had an uncomplicated but ingenious plot with a present that was masterfully woven into the framework of the past, a history that had to be understood by the main characters in order for them to be freed from the shackles that could comsume them in the present.

Adelaide, the house matriarch in her 90's, had lived at the stately Holly Oak mansion all her life.  Holly Oak was an antebellum residence in Virginia in what used to be a progressive plantation during the civil war.  Adelaide's grandson-in-law, Carson, and his two children, continued to reside with Adelaide even after the death of his wife, Sara, who was Adelaide's granddaughter.  Four years after Sara's death, Carson remarried and that was how Marielle, his new wife, also became part of Holly Oak.

There were rumors of Holly Oak being haunted by the spirit of one of its previous residents, Susannah Page, the great grandmother of Adelaide, who lived during the civil war and was rumored to be a spy who aided Yankee soldiers.    Despite the gossips circulating in the community especially among her friends, Adelaide refused to believe that the house was haunted; rather, she maintained that the house itself was the problem, that it had acquired some type of persona or soul, and that it was in turmoil.  Such turmoil, she believed, was the cause of misfortunes that befell into the lives of women who lived there.  Generations of women that came after Susannah seemed to have been caught in a web of adversity that Adelaide believed to be caused by the house itself.  Marielle, although not believing that the house was haunted, wanted to discover more about its past.  Her search for answers brought her unexpectedly to the journals of Sara, Carson's dead wife, which gave her a better understanding of who she was and what her struggles were.  Through Caroline, Sara's estranged mother, Marielle was introduced to Susannah through the letters she left.  Such letters would have ultimately vindicated Susannah from the erroneous perceptions of people in the community but the present residents of Holly Oak decided it did not matter since Susannah herself, when she was alive, did not think it mattered.

"A Sound Among The Trees" is a story of restitution and redemption, of unrequited young love and the sacrifice that led to the discovery of another face of love.  It has that slow, unhurried pace that seems to echo the calm, quiet lives of its characters in a pseudo-pastoral setting.  Despite its almost lack of page-turning episodes, this book is still a good read for its clever storyline and the glimpse it affords the readers on the lives of those who saw the ugly face of the civil war that almost annihilated the soul of this great nation.  I'm therefore giving it a 4-star rating.

I received this book  free from the publisher, Waterbrook Multnomah.com,  in exchange for an honest review.