In this dual-timeline mystery, successful writer Chloe Whitfield spends her summer on site at the Ringling mansion in Sarasota, Florida, researching her forthcoming book. While there, she plans to look into her own family's mystery. According to family lore, Chloe's great-grandmother had been a famous trapeze artist with the Ringling Brothers circus. However, Lucinda Conroy seemed to disappear without a trace, abandoning her daughter--Chloe's grandmother--to an orphanage. Chapters alternate between Chloe's story, set in 2022, and Lucinda's story, which begins in 1936. Chloe's book deadline looms, but the deeper she gets into Lucinda's story, the less able she is to write her own. Meanwhile, mysterious happenings on the grounds of Ringling's Gilded Age mansion create suspense--and provide an opportunity for romance to bloom.

The Gilded Age is one of my favorite story settings, so I was immediately drawn in by the rich historical and architectural detail about the Ringling mansion. The author is clear that most of the characters and situations in the book are fictional, but the author's research on the Ringling family, the mansion, and the era resulted in a not-so-run-of-the-mill historical mystery. My only wish is that the faith of the characters had been more fully developed.