The Inheritance of Beauty (Paperback or Softback)

Beauty, like truth, is enduring. But only one can set you free.

MAGGIE BLACK CAME OF AGE in the lush, fragrant lowcountry of South Carolina—spending her days with her beloved brother and the boy she would grow up to marry. But when a stranger arrived one summer, Maggie couldn’t imagine the evil he would bring with him. And though she escaped with her life, the ramifications of that fateful summer would alter all of their lives forever.

Now, some eighty years later, Maggie and her husband George are spending their remaining days in a nursing home, helpless as age slowly robs Maggie of her ability to communicate. When a mysterious package arrives, followed closely by a stranger whose identity haunts them, Maggie and George are hemmed in by a history they’d rather forget.

As the truth reveals itself, George knows he must face the past and its lifetime of repercussions. It’s the only way to free himself and his precious wife—if it’s not too late.

The Inheritance of Beauty is a rich and enchanting story about age and beauty and the ability of true beauty to transcend one's life.

Harmony House assisted-care residents George and Maggie Jacobs have known each other for almost 80 years and lived, most of that time, in peace, despite Maggie's recent stroke. But when an oddly familiar new resident moves in, they're forced to confront the haunting events of their distant past. As children in 1920s Levy, S.C., their idyllic youth was interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious magician and his laconic son. They soon realize that he's there for a reason, and the dark secret he carries will leave one person dead, a house burned down, and all of their lives forever altered. Though George has lived with his long buried past, he decides, at 80, that it's time to return to South Carolina and face the truth. Christian author Seitz (Saving Cicadas) easily inhabits her elderly characters and deftly juggles a large cast, but she's no stranger to sentiment or hyperbole, and the former tragedies haunting her characters don't carry the life-altering drama with which they're alluded to ("Eventually, it destroyed everything I held most dear"), resulting in a novel that is equally saccharine and anticlimactic. (Feb.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.