The Barnes & Noble Review
Flashback finds Park Ranger Anna Pigeon mingling past mysteries with present dangers in one of the most exotic of America's national parks. To give herself time to sort out her feelings, after an unexpected proposal of marriage from her sheriff/priest boyfriend, Anna takes a short-term post as supervisory ranger on Garden Key, in Dry Tortugas National Park. This remote series of islands in the Florida Keys offers visitors beautiful scenery combined with fascinating history. Garden Key itself is the site of Fort Jefferson, where the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination were held along with Confederate prisoners of war. The crumbling fortress holds special significance for Anna, whose several-times-great-aunt Raffia lived at the fort when her husband was posted there...especially after Anna's sister sends her a packet of letters Raffia wrote there after the Civil War. When not fantasizing about that long-ago time, Anna splits her attention between dealing with work, scuba diving, and wondering what really happened to the previous ranger (rumored to have gone crazy after his girlfriend left him). Then strange things begin to happen. The assistant ranger is lost at sea, a small craft blows up, and the bodies of the crew prove impossible to identify...and Anna, hardheaded, rational Anna, finds herself adrift in visions involving Raffia and one of the men accused of conspiring to kill President Lincoln. As Anna struggles to untangle herself from deadly puzzles, past and present, she uncovers a modern conspiracy that could end in a devastating bloodbath. Sue Stone