Gravely Dead: A Midcoast Maine Mystery

Sarah Cassidy attended Migawoc Girls’ Camp in mid-coast Maine as a teenager some forty years ago. While there, she befriended Myra Huggard, the camp’s crotchety neighbor. The camp is long gone now, its waterfront land sold off for high-end house lots. In addition, ninety-four year old Myra Huggard died a few months ago in a suspicious house fire-at the same time her friend, young Cathy Leduc disappeared.

Now, as spring arrives, the elderly couple who ran the camp unexpectedly invite Sarah to spend the summer in Maine, and she jumps at the chance to regroup after her recent divorce, and get out on the water in Owl, the camp’s old sailboat.

Sarah’s vacation turns out to be anything but restful when she discovers that Myra was murdered, and almost everybody has a reason for wanting her dead. When Sarah and Oliver Wendell, a reclusive boatbuilder who is helping her fix up Owl, start asking inconvenient questions, they find themselves being stalked by a killer.

It soon becomes clear to Sarah that Myra is manipulating her from beyond the grave, and she has been made a pawn in the old lady’s deadly game of lies, blackmail, and murder.

To escape this sinister web, Sarah is forced to reexamine her youthful relationship with Myra Huggard as she struggles to separate reality from illusion. In the process, she confronts a long suppressed childhood trauma and murder, all while dealing with her troublesome ex-husband and a would-be suitor whose interest may have more to do with murder that romance.