Erin's Book #46: The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

I discovered Kate Morton's The House at Riverton several years ago through a book club. It remains one of my favorites. Her novels have a very specific style - a present-day (or at least modern) character has some connection to the past and the books alternate between two time periods, as the modern characters slowly discover the truth about the past. Her settings are incredibly lush and vivid; she's a genius at transporting you to another time period, filled with wealth and elegance.

In The Distant Hours, a 30-year-old woman named Edie works as a publisher in 1992 in London. She discovers that her mother was an evacuee during the war and stayed for several months in a castle called Milderhurst, where the author of Edie's favorite childhood novel lived. Edie stumbles upon the castle one day when she gets lost and finds the three Blythe sisters, now all quite old, still living there. What follows is a mesmerizing mystery of love and heartbreak, madness and guilt. What connection does Edie's mom have to the sisters? What happened to the youngest sister's fiance? And what does any of it have to do with the origin of Raymond Blythe's beloved children's story?

I had more difficulty getting absorbed in this one than Morton's other two, but once I did, I literally couldn't put it down. It's a tragic tale, but a gratifying one, as all of the pieces slowly fit together. A beautiful romantic mystery that I highly recommend.