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Cover of Silversword

Silversword

Phyllis A. Whitney

600 pages

A brooding, atmospheric journey to a lush island where long-buried family secrets and the echoes of childhood love wait to be unearthed.

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What it feels like

This atmospheric romantic suspense novel wraps the reader in a mood that is both lushly tropical and deeply shadowed by gothic mystery. The narrative unfolds at a steady, deliberate pace, drawing you into an introspective exploration of shattered childhoods, disastrous marriages, and the heavy weight of family deception. As the protagonist navigates the brooding landscapes of Maui and the crater of Haleakala, the prose remains earnest and melancholic, perfectly capturing the tension between nostalgic yearning and the dread of uncovering a hidden past. It is a story of emotional excavation, moving from disillusionment to the hopeful rekindling of lost love. Readers who crave evocative settings paired with the slow-burn tension of unearthing long-buried secrets will find themselves completely absorbed.

Mood
  • brooding
  • nostalgic
  • mysterious
  • shadowed
Tone
  • earnest
  • melancholic
  • suspenseful
  • introspective
Pace
steady
Themes
uncovering family secrets · healing from past trauma · rekindling lost love · the weight of deception · mother-daughter bonds
The writing
The prose is atmospheric and emotionally reflective, blending the lush descriptions of a Hawaiian setting with the tense undercurrents of a gothic mystery.
The arc
The protagonist moves from a state of shattered innocence and marital disillusionment toward a courageous confrontation with a hidden past and the possibility of renewed love.
Who it's for
Readers who love atmospheric romantic suspense where long-buried family secrets and sweeping landscapes intertwine with a journey of personal healing.
Content notes
  • mental illness
  • mysterious death
  • divorce
  • family deception

About the book

It's strange the way vivid dreams, or vivid relivings of the past, can affect one afterward. Joanna had invited David to come for breakfast, and when he walked into the kitchen, I found myself looking at him with a new self-consciousness that was almost embarrassment. I wondered if he had ever relived our trip to the Needle. But of course he couldn't have. He probably had no idea of all he'd meant to a small girl that day, or of how dearly I'd loved him with a child's yearning, innocent affection.

Could Caroline Kirby ever rekindle the feelings of that happy past? Could she go back to Maui-that loveliest of Hawaiian islands, where, she had been born and where, for her first six years, she had lived so contentedly with her parents and her grandmother Joanna? Then something dreadful and mysterious had happened, and her childhood world had been shattered by a death that no one would explain.

Taken away to San Francisco by her father's mother, grandmother Elizabeth, Caroline found that all her ties with Maui were broken. Elizabeth determined that her granddaughter must never see the island again, must never know what had happened there.

But Caroline, now grown and needing to escape from a disastrous marriage and unhappy divorce, learns unexpectedly of the deception on which her life has been built. Now she must return to face the secret that has lain hidden all these years in the brooding crater of Haleakala. Not only her grandma Joanna waited for her on Maui, but she was to find David again-now an exciting and enigmatic man who would change her life forever.

Description from Open Library.

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