An Ostentation

by Pamelia Barratt

Overview

This is a story about the Peacock family, a family as old as Chicago. Born in 1837, the city and family grew side by side, undergoing tremendous physical and cultural changes. The family's patriarch, Elijah Peacock, arrived at the tip of Lake Michigan the same year that the city was incorporated, a third-generation jeweler and watch repairman emigrating from England. Building a business in a new land, fathering seven children by two wives in the process, the next four generations of his family, locally renowned for its elegant jewelry store, CD Peacock's, provides the basis for Pamelia Barratt's latest historical mystery novel. The mid-twentieth century finds the family coping with the downturn of their business following WWII. Feathers are ruffled when Bernard Peacock is determined to marry Safi, a Jewish girl from Maxwell Street.
Mysteries and secrets are embedded within the family tree and concealed by the pride of consecutive generations. Tensions created by the divisions of class and ethnicity set the stage for a compelling love story during the transformative years of a great city, woven into a murder mystery intimately entwined with Chicago's development.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940045500456
Publisher:	Plowshare Media
Publication date:	12/09/2013
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	657 KB

About the Author

Pamelia Barratt has lived on both the east and west coasts of the United States. She grew up in Chicago, summered in Wisconsin, lived for extended periods of time in Switzerland and Britain, and volunteered for ten years with a development nonprofit that works in the high Andes of Bolivia. After a career as a high school chemistry teacher, she became a journalist in San Diego, and then discovered the thrill of writing fiction. Her first novel, "Blood: the Color of Cranberries", was published in 2009. It was followed by "An Ostentation" two years later. "Gray Dominion" is her third mystery.

“My hodgepodge background has offered a great source of characters and situations to draw on for storytelling. Birds and nature continually renew my spirits,” Pamelia says. It’s no wonder that creatures of the wild assume important roles in her stories.