In many ways, we all carry the memories and burdens of our ancestors. For Alice and Penn, their history is also tied to mystery and the missing colony at Roanoke. 

 

In this dual-storyline historical, the last days of one of the few survivors of the Roanoke colony and her WWII era descendants come together in sensory-rich struggle to find their place in the world.

 

I typically enjoy fast-paced, plot-driven books, but on occasion, and if the writing is outstanding, I can lose myself in a more literary style where the internal struggle of each character is as important as their external conflicts.

 

This is one of those books.

 

The writing is smooth and there is a nuanced purpose in every action and every dialogue. The story is a slow, deliberate climb with an oh-so-satisfying ending. 

 

This book embraces the idea that home is where we make it and love is the greatest guiding force that exists.

4.5/5

Book Details

The fate of the world is often driven by the curiosity of a girl.

 

What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known that the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured commonplace book. Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age. Thirteen-year-old Alice had been next in line to receive it, but her mother’s tragic death fractured the unbroken legacy and the Dare Stone and the shadowy history recorded in the book faded into memory. Or so Alice hoped.

 

In the waning days of World War II, Alice is a young widow and a mother herself when she is unexpectedly presented with her birthright: the deed to Evertell, her abandoned family home and the history she thought forgotten. Determined to sell the property and step into a future free of the past, Alice returns to Savannah with her own thirteen-year-old daughter, Penn, in tow. But when Penn’s curiosity over the lineage she never knew begins to unveil secrets from beneath every stone and bone and shell of the old house and Eleanor’s book is finally found, Alice is forced to reckon with the sacrifices made for love and the realities of their true inheritance as daughters of Eleanor Dare.