Monday, December 26, 2011

The Legacy Of Eden-Nelle Davy

The Legacy Of Eden


Nelle Davy

Mira, Jan 24 2012, $15.95

ISBN: 9780778329558



Lavinia Hathaway’s dream was to make her family the royalty of Iowa at any cost to relatives, friends and the peasants. She destroyed so many people so that her three thousand-acre estate Aurelia was the Taj Mahal farm of the Hawkeye State. Generations after Lavinia’s seemingly success, decades later later prove her outcome an abysmal failure. The last Hathaway, forty-five years old Caledon, still lives at the once glorious but now in debt estate dies form cirrhosis of the liver (a male family trait) alone; none of the extended family wants anything to do with Lavinia’s curse.



In New York City, Meredith Pincetti receives a letter pleading with her to come home after seventeen years of blissful self-imposed exile using her mother’s maiden name. Her gut says to ignore it, but her DNA tells her to go home. Her sister Ava tells her she told the lawyers no. However, Meredith and her other sibling Claudia return to Aurelia, the site of some much anguish as Lavinia’s dream was everyone else’s nightmare.



This is a fascinating epic of the impact of a ruthless matriarch has on her descendants; for instance the three mostly estranged sisters have limited if any contact with one another and the males turn to alcohol to ease their torment. Although the story line is straighter than the Bonneville Flats lacking any twists, fans will enjoy this entertaining family drama.



Harriet Klausner

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