Burden of Memory: A Mystery

Elaine Benson, a successful novelist who let love in the person of an unreliable screenwriter jettison her career, is now divorced, broke, and on her way to a so-called primitive, untamed northern forest on Canada's Lake Muskoka to interview for a job. Elderly Miss Moira Madison of the fabulously rich Canadian family wishes to write her memoirs. Miss Madison isn't interested in a bestseller; she wants to leave a record of her life and, most specifically, of her years with the Canadian Army Nursing Sisters of World War II. Her service in the European theaters was filled with triumphs and bitter losses and forever shaped her life. Settling into the family "cottage" and what remains of a lifestyle long gone, Elaine reconnects with her love of researching the past-until she discovers that the first such writer hired died under suspicious circumstances. Could her project stir someone to murder?

"The best Canadian novels are always firmly set in a place...Vicki Delany's second novel effectively uses the Muskoka setting for a very fine novel about memory and class and caste in old Ontario...Someone doesn't want the story of Moira Madison written and is willing to kill to keep the family secrets. Delany has done a great job with this book...This is, obviously, ideal reading for a weekend at the cottage or as a hostess gift for visitors. Read it under the trees and see every page come to life."-Globe and Mail