Kevin W. Ryan is a seventy-seven-year-old first-time novelist, who spent a year as an interim president/CEO of Wyndham Community Hospital located in Willimantic, Connecticut, in the mid-1990s. He immediately became enthralled with the history and beauty of the city and its surrounding countryside. After thirty years of intermittent revival of writing notes on a fictional story based on some of the realities of living and working there, set in the mid-nineteenth century, he completed his story of the Fields family, a prominent presence in Willimantic, who owned and operated one of the major mills producing threads and fabrics there. Through the eyes of Melanie Fields, the book traces the involvement of family members in solving a theft at the mill and also sleuthing to successfully solve both the theft and the unfortunate murder of a mill worker. It also covers some difficult and painful family relationship issues involving death, estrangement, and discovery. The richness of family life and intrigue is evident in the love of three generations as their lives evolve with experiences pre-Civil War through the 1870s. Culturally, as in the case of the nation, Willimantic experienced the expansion of many immigrants to the area and felt the same interactions and at times tensions among them. The storyline provides insight into the life of an expanding town, cultural integration, crime and murder, and family dilemma. A period piece, the experiences and consequences could resonate in our own times.
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