In her enthralling novels of literary suspense, Carol Goodman writes
stories that resonate with emotion set in lush landscapes that entice
the senses. Now, with The Ghost Orchid, a narrative that seamlessly
weaves together the past and the present, Goodman creates her most
lyrical and haunting work to date.
For more than one hundred
years, creative souls have traveled to Upstate New York to work under
the captivating spell of the Bosco estate. Cradled in silence, inspired
by the rough beauty of overgrown gardens and crumbling statuary, these
chosen few fashion masterworks – and have cemented Bosco’s reputation as a premier artists’ colony. This season, five talented
artists-in-residence find themselves drawn to the history of Bosco, from the extensive network of fountains that were once its centerpiece but
have long since run dry to the story of its enigmatic founder, Aurora
Latham, and the series of tragic events that occurred more than a
century ago.
Ellis Brooks, a first-time novelist, has come to
Bosco to write a book based on Aurora and the infamous summer of 1893,
when wealthy, powerful Milo Latham brought the notorious medium Corinth
Blackwell to the estate to help his wife contact three of the couple’s
children, lost the winter before in a diphtheria epidemic. But when a
séance turned deadly, Corinth and her alleged accomplice, Tom Quinn,
disappeared, taking with them the Lathams’ only surviving child.
The more time she spends at Bosco, the more Ellis becomes convinced that
there is an even darker, more sinister end to the story. And she’s not
alone: biographer Bethesda Graham uncovers stunning revelations about
Milo and Corinth; landscape architect David Fox discovers a series of
hidden tunnels underneath the gardens; poet Zalman Bronsky hears the
long-dry fountain’s waters beckoning him; and novelist Nat Loomis feels
something lingering just out of reach.
After a bizarre series of
accidents befalls them, the group cannot deny the connections between
the long ago and now, the living and the dead... as Ellis realizes
that the tangled truth may ensnare them all in its cool embrace.
