The Summer at the Kinderhook Inn: Love, Loss, and a 1932 Hudson Valley Mystery (Echoes in the Lobby: Historic Hotel Mysteries of America’s Hidden Past)

In the winter of 1932, Albany portrait painter Jonathan “Johnny” Wyckoff is shattered when his wife, Maria, is murdered after hours at her workplace. With the case stalled and his gift for capturing people in oils gone numb with grief, Johnny flees to Kinderhook for the summer, hoping the village light and the steady rhythm of the historic inn will bring him back to himself.

Instead, he meets Tess, a quiet wedding guest who asks for a private portrait. As sittings begin, Johnny finds color returning to his world, and an unexpected connection starts to loosen grief’s grip. But when Tess vanishes without explanation, the finished painting becomes more than a commission. It is a troubling clue that pulls Johnny toward long-buried questions about what really happened to Maria, and whether the past can be confronted without destroying what’s left of the present.