Isolation: A Faye Longchamp Mystery: 9 (Faye Longchamp Archaeological Mysteries, 9) - Hardcover

A mystery from the past provides just the therapy a grieving mother needs. Archaeologist Faye Longchamp-Mantooth is in a deep depression after suffering a miscarriage and losing her baby daughter. Her husband, Joe Wolf Mantooth, is holding things together, caring for their son, Michael, and dealing with a visit from his long-estranged father, Sly Mantooth. Faye spends her time aimlessly digging holes on Joyeuse Island, her home off the Florida coast, until one day she digs into an old tank that's releasing some noxious fluid. When the crew from the EPA arrives, they find elevated amounts of arsenic in the soil. On the mainland, Faye's friend Liz Colton has been murdered and a local boat mechanic caught dumping noxious substances in the water. Faye's been trying to avoid Oscar Croft, a wealthy Ohio native convinced that his Civil War officer ancestor was held prisoner nearby by a crazy woman who sent his sword home to his wife. Working for Oscar is Delia Scarsdale, an attractive genealogist determined to track down information on Cally Stanton. Faye's unwilling to admit that Cally is her great-great-grandmother, a former slave who owned Joyeuse and left an unpublished memoir mentioning the Civil War officer. Could the murder, the contamination, and the search for information about the past all be related? Faye, who feels compelled to look for answers, puts her whole family in grave danger, but what she finds turns out to be her salvation. A worthwhile addition to Faye's long-running series (Rituals, 2013, etc.) that weaves history, mystery, and psychology into a satisfying tale of greed and passion.--Kirkus Reviews

Faye Longchamp-Mantooth has dug herself a deep hole and she can't make her way out of it. As she struggles to recover from a shattering personal loss, she sees that everyone she loves is trying to reach out to her, but she just can't manage to reach back.Joe Wolf Mantooth has never felt so alone, despite living in his house with the wife he loves, the son he adores, and the father who hasn't got around to telling him how long he's been out of prison or what he did to get sent there. When one of their close friends is brutally murdered, Joe begins to wonder whether Faye will ever be herself again, and he knows he needs to help her. As crimes against women rock Micco County, one after another, he realizes that Faye is in danger from both her inner demons and an outside evil. This evil has intruded on their island home and violated the isolation that they had always believed would protect them.Faye and Joe can only fight this evil if they work together, but first they have to remember how. And all the while, the danger snakes further into their lives, threatening the people they love, the very ground beneath their feet, and even their home and the island where it stands. No man is an island, and no woman. Faye and Joe must break open the isolation that grips them, or they will lose everything.