When Tommie McCloud receives a mysterious letter from the wife of a convicted mob boss serving life in prison for multiple murders, life as she knows it becomes a question mark. Am I the kidnapped little girl from this letter? Were my parents really NOT my parents? Could the mob be after me and my family?

Coming home from her psychology position at a camp that helps traumatized youths, Tommie steps into a heap of troubling discoveries that take her form Texas to Chicago to Oklahoma as she searches for her true identity while dodging mob hits and sorting out who to trust and who wants her and her mother’s secrets buried.

A well-paced story that will keep you turning the pages. There is no jaw-dropping revelations in this one, but there doesn’t need to be to hold your attention. Written in the engaging way Julia Heaberlin has, you will find many reasons to sneak under the covers with a flashlight to finish this one.

I’m a fan of Heaberlin, and finding this older gem (published in 2012) shows me she has always had the power of the pen.

*Note: I listened to this on audio and was often distracted by the narration. If I could do it over, I would pick up the old-fashioned paper book. ( )

Read it in one day on a flight from Key West to Chicago. Could not put it down. Great multi-layered mystery with a little bit of everything. Mystery, danger, action, and veiled sexual tension. Loved it! ( )

I so enjoyed Black-Eyed Susans, by Julia Heaberlin that I picked up her debut novel, Playing Dead¸ and finished it at 1:00 a.m. this morning! It’s a great mystery, with characters so real, you’d think they lived in your neighborhood (if y’all are from Texas)!

Tommie McLoud has just moved back home to Ponder, Texas, population 1,101, to handle her recently deceased father’s business affairs and help her sister, Sadie, with their mom, who is suffering from dementia. Unexpectedly, Tommie receives a letter from an unknown woman in Chicago who claims to be Tommie’s birth mother and states that Tommie was kidnapped as a baby 30 years before. What follows is a suspenseful mystery as Tommie follows clue after clue that somehow links her life with the slaughter of a family in Chicago, the murder of a beauty queen in Oklahoma and a mafia don named Anthony Marchetti.

Tommie is a great narrator, a former rodeo queen who pokes fun at southern quirkiness, yet still extols the vast beauty of the land and skies of her native state. The reader will get caught up in the suspense of the story as Tommie comes to understand that everything she thought she knew about her childhood is suspect. With the help of a former lover, a hippy sister, a gruff newsman and a suspicious writer, Tommie unravels her past and uncovers unexpected secrets and lies about the family she thought she knew. This one kept me turning the pages, and had some fantastic twists I didn’t see coming. Can’t wait to see what Ms. Heaberlin comes up with next!
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If this had been an audible purchase I'd never have gotten through it. The narrator drove me crazy. All the male voices sounded like Eeyore. Only dumber. Not that Tommie was a bright light herself. Now that it's done and I've moved on I can't even remember how it ended. ( )

beautiful, haunting and a page turner to the end. ( )