Behind the Veil

by E J Dawson

Overview

Can she keep the secrets of her past to rescue a girl tormented by a ghost?

In 1920s Los Angeles, Letitia Hawking reads the veil between life and death. A scrying bowl allows her to experience the final moments of the deceased. She brings closure to grief-stricken war widows and mourning families.

For Letitia, it is a penance. She knows no such peace.

For Alasdair Driscoll, it may be the only way to save his niece, Finola, from her growing night terrors. But when Letitia sees a shadowy figure attached to the household, it rouses old fears of her unspeakable past in England.

When a man comes to her about his missing daughter, the third girl to go missing in as many months, Letitia can't help him when she can't see who's taken them.

As a darkness haunts Letitia's vision, she may not be given a choice in helping the determined Mr Driscoll, or stop herself falling in love with him. But to do so risks a part of herself she locked away, and to release it may cost Letitia her sanity and her heart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942856887
Publisher:	Literary Wanderlust
Publication date:	10/01/2021
Pages:	292
Sales rank:	1,061,930
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.66(d)

About the Author

E.J. Dawson both credits and blames her mother-by reading The Lord of the Rings aloud to E.J. twice-for her complete absorption with the world of fiction. Growing up in a haunted mansion sandwiched between an abandoned mine and an endless pine plantation should have been all the fuel E.J.'s imagination needed, but her parents filled her life with stories: about themselves, their lives, and the ones they had found through the pages of books.

Editorial Reviews

2021-08-30
A tormented medium takes on a difficult case in this supernatural novel.

In 1920s Los Angeles, the spiritualist movement is in full swing. Parents and widows of soldiers who died in World War I are still looking for closure, and medium Letitia Hawking is there to deliver it. Letitia uses her “scrying bowl” to view the deathbed moments of the deceased, offering accounts of their final thoughts to the bereaved and bringing them the peace she cannot find for herself. She wears a black veil during her readings to increase the sense of mystery—and to hide her identity from anyone who might recognize her from her past in London. When she’s approached by the wealthy lawyer Alasdair Driscoll about a case involving his still living young niece, Finola, the medium initially declines. Driscoll wants Letitia to sign a confidentiality agreement before they begin, and she can sense a shadow looming behind him. “She didn’t need the Driscolls’ ghosts,” she thinks. “She had enough of her own.” Then Letitia learns just what’s wrong with Finola: The girl is haunted by phantoms, and if she isn’t helped, she will end up in an asylum. Letitia takes pity on the girl—whose condition has much in common with the medium’s own—and begins to have feelings for Driscoll as well. But can Letitia help the living without someone ending up dead? Dawson’s prose is measured and suspenseful as she slowly unspools the tale: “Finola’s breathing was labored, her eyes twitching beneath her lids and forehead clammy, with threads of auburn hair sticking to her skin….There was no darkness attached to the girl, though the room’s low light gave too many shadows for Letitia’s liking. Ever wary of self-protection, she took hesitant footsteps closer.” The author is adept at selling not only the novel’s supernatural elements, but the historical era as well. She takes her time building the characters and the world around them, which pays dividends once the really spooky stuff starts to happen. Like all good ghost stories, the true horrors aren’t entirely spectral: The characters are haunted by personal traumas and secrets as frightening as any spirit.

An old-fashioned ghost story told with inventiveness and style.

Kirkus Reviews