Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters by Emily Carpenter

Set in two time frames 1934 and now the story is a rough and hard one. Dove Jarrod was an evangelist and well loved and revered. Her grand daughter Eve also knows that she was a fraud. History of Dove was a turbulent one, filled with secrets and stories that went back decades. She also collected a lot of enemies over the time, and one of them waited a long time for his revenge, and he did get it when he murdered her. The fact that she was in her 90s covered up for him entirely, and it was passed as a death from natural causes. Eve her grand daughter today has to go through blackmail to protect her memory, and more than that protect her mother who is mentally far too fragile to face any kind of inquisition about her mother. Set in Tuscaloosa the story of a family with a dark past was heavy. The characters seemed vengeful (most of them) but this added to the gothic kind of story. It depicts a part of America which is somewhat different to what one reads of the rest of America (this from an outsiders point of view though). Rather insular, restrictive and protective of its own. Sent by Lake Union Publishing for an unbiased review, courtesy of Netgalley