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July: Amy Stedman, working in the family business called Pink and Blue and Max, goes to Eastern North Carolina to clear out her grandmother's house, prior to selling the house and land and sharing the money among all the relatives. Frances Barbour had been murdered during a burglary in April. The company was started by Frances and was named after Amy's mother (Maxie for Maxine) and her favorite toys (two crude hand made stuffed animals) Maxie had learned to play by herself because her parents were too wrapped up in each other to bother much with her. Her grandfather purported to be a sensitive poet, much changed by the war. He was an extremely handsome man, and her artistic grandmother doted on him. Maxine grew up despite the benign neglect of her parents, and married a man who would later become head of Pink and Blue and Max, a company which published the books that Max's father wrote and that Max's mother illustrated. But when Amy was a toddler, Max committed suicide. Amy doesn't remember much about her mother but when she, and her half-sister Beth, start clearing the house, she finds some long hidden secrets, and when a cousin is poisoned, she starts digging deeper until she finds the truth the family has kept from her. Maron does Southern very well. She gets the pace, the dialect, the tangled family relationships. There is a genealogical chart in the front of the book for those who need it, but her characterizations are so distinct that it's really not necessary. I happen to like both her Deborah Knott and Sigrid Harald series. This stand alone is just as good.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, August 2003
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