It’s every adult child’s nightmare: an elderly parent, isolated and confused, mishandles his financial affairs and winds up deeply in debt. Rachel Myers never expected that to happen to her father Paul. Yes, Paul was blind, but with the help of a housekeeper and a longtime farm hand and friend, Isaac Starling, he managed his mountain farm. Rachel, who lives in Arizona, felt some pull to come home, but she knew she would never find a job in the mountains as good as the managerial job that she has in Flagstaff.
Only when Paul dies and Rachel comes back to North Carolina to bury him does she find out how bad Paul’s situation had become. Rachel learns from Isaac that her father fired his longtime housekeeper soon after a local banker, Ed McKinney, became a frequent visitor to the farm. And the farm itself has changed–the cattle have been sold and the house and surrounding yard have had expensive improvements that surprise Rachel. But the biggest surprise is that Paul Myers died in debt to the tune of $230,000. How did this happen–and does it have anything to do with the surveyor’s stakes that dot the nearby hill? As Rachel looks into her father’s financial affairs, time and again she is led back to Ed McKinney and his puzzling influence on her father.
This is the first book in a series of ten novels by Ms. Jackson, all set along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Watch this site for summaries of later books in the series.
Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.
