The Devil's Madonna
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
Happily married and pregnant with her first child, artist Kali Miller probes Lillian Campbell, her ninety-three year old grandmother, for information about her roots and her mother's accidental death when Kali was a child. But the impact on her grandmother and the answers that Kali gets are anything but what she expected. Kali's questions intensify the profound paranoia that has dominated her grandmother's adult life -- that someone from the past has found her - and with Kali's demand for the truth, Lillian sinks into a life of nightmares and paralyzing fear. Will her life in 1930's Berlin, her loves and lies, and the true meaning of the small painting that she has hidden for more than seventy years be exposed to reveal the hideous secret that has haunted Lillian to this day? Or will the hunt to uncover her past lead to the imminent murder of Lillian and her pregnant granddaughter? Perhaps murder is the only means to keep Kali and her unborn child from a future that no one in the world would ever want to face?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this chilling if bizarre and implausible thriller, Potts (Someone's Watching) juxtaposes the current-day life of artist Kali Miller, a young woman expecting her first child, with the fragmented memories of Kali's 93-year-old grandmother, Lillian Campbell. Flashbacks trace Lillian's troubled journey from girlhood in pre-WWII Austria and the tumult of 1930s Berlin to retirement in Miami, Fla., haunted by fears of the past catching up with her. In the present, Kali, already preoccupied by relationship difficulties with her husband, realizes that she has a stalker. This mysterious figure's obsession with her is equaled only by his determination to find a small painting hidden somewhere in Lillian's decaying old house. Kali enlists her grandmother's faltering recollections in an attempt to unravel the mystery, even as it becomes clear that the solution may reveal more than either woman wants to know.
