Halls of Secret-Cate Campbell

Halls of Secret Cate Campbell Kensington, Jan 28 2014, $15.00 ISBN: 9780758292285 In 1920 Seattle, several months have passed since psychopathic Preston Benedict died in the fire he lit (see Benedict Hall). His sister Margot starts a medical practice not without angry opposition including her father to a modern thinking female physician; while she also is seeing Boeing engineer Frank Parrish, who has a new prosthetic arm replacing the one he lost in combat. Margot has accepted Preston’s death, but their grieving dazed mom Edith seems locked in the past as she refuses to allow any changes to her son’s room. On a Grand Tour, nineteen years old Hattie Benedict sneaks away from her parents for a fun evening. However, her angry parents feel Allison’s behavior shameful so she is exiled to backwater Seattle to stay with her family there. Considered a heroic anomaly to her younger cousin, Margot mentors Hattie to go after what she wants out of life and to hell with family members who only care about public image. The second Benedict family historical drama is an engaging look at a changing America caused by the impact of WWI. The storyline mostly centers on thoroughly modern Margot (with a nod to Millie by Dick Scanlan and Richard Morris) whose beliefs are decades ahead of her time. Readers will relish Cate Campbell's entertaining look at the Pacific Northwest just after the "war to end all wars" ended with the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) and Nineteenth Amendment (Women’s Right to Vote). Harriet Klausner