The Barnes & Noble Review
Susan Wittig Albert's bestelling China Bayles mystery series grows in an exciting new direction in Bloodroot. Although she's a plant lover, digging around the roots of her family tree has never been China's favorite pastime. The family plantation in Mississippi may be beautiful, but her memories of childhood summers there still haunt her. China hates her connection to the Old South and its injustices, so she hasn't been back in years. She wouldn't have agreed to go now, except her mother told her that her legal expertise was needed to keep Great Aunt Tullie out of jail. Tullie Coldwell is a difficult old woman at best (and she's seldom at her best). But she raised China's mom and, now that Tullie's ill and in trouble, that debt must be paid. It's unwelcome news to everyone concerned when Tullie's illness is revealed to be a degenerative, progressive, ultimately fatal neurological disease that's hereditary -- yet another unwanted legacy that China could someday inherit from her mother's family. But, even as China starts to come to terms with that frightening inheritance, unsnarling her great aunt's legal problems leads her into a complex and dangerous investigation into disappearances, deaths, family secrets, and property disputes...both present and past. Sue Stone