The Secret Watcher of Summit Avenue

In an unnamed Midwestern city, young Carole Browning, attorney-at-law, discovers out of the blue that she’s inherited a weathered, century-old Victorian home perched on Summit Avenue overlooking the city. Carole had been adopted at age two and knows nothing of her blood relatives, least of all the Henry Winkler whose will had left her the house and who, it appears, is her great-grandfather. It is a house filled with secrets, which are now Carole’s to discover (along with her cartoonist husband Carlos, who has an agenda of his own) as she deals fitfully with the reality of her newly acquired property and the lost family it implies. Interwoven with Carole’s journey of discovery is the story of the house itself. Beginning in 1894, when Henry’s father Wilhelm had a secret to reveal, the narrative moves steadily through four generations of Winklers, braiding a rich tapestry of love and enmity, joy and despair, kindness and sometimes violent harm, crippling self-delusion, and a long and well-hidden felony. And all in an old house that seems sometimes to defy the laws of physics.