SEEKING SIGNS by Staci Angelina Mercado

I bought Seeking Signs at the first annual (I hope) Clinton Book Festival on August 29, 2015. I was there promoting my book, Taming the Twisted, so was drawn to this book that has a similar idea - a novel based on a local historical event. Seeking Signs tells the story from Elsie Seamer's point of view. After Elsie's sister, Minnie, is found hanging in the barn on June 20, 1913, Elsie becomes amateur investigator seeking to debunk the coroner's ruling of her sister's death as a suicide.

The story builds as Elsie delves deeper into solving the mystery until a terrible event beyond her control brings the final understanding of truth. As Elsie's story is told, so is her sister's weaved through passages from newspaper articles appearing at the time and Minnie's diary, and her family's, dealing with a grave illness.

The story follows the "formula" of a mystery novel, with the amateur detective being "called" to solve the crime, reaching a point of no return, and enlisting the aid of a partner. But, perhaps because the mystery is based on an actual historical event in a real place at a real time, it didn't feel like it was following any sort of formula or recipe. It's simply a face-paced, suspenseful story. The fact that it's based on a real event makes it all that much more fascinating.

I got so engrossed in this book that won the Midwest Book Gold Award for historical fiction in 2013 from the Midwest Independent Publishers' Association, that I didn't even take notes as I read. The book was easy-to-follow, pleasant to read, and pulled me through to the end. So, on a can't-put-it-down-scale of one for I couldn't even finish it to ten for I was up until the wee morning hours, I give it a nine.



Source: Mercado, Staci Angelina. (2013). Seeking Signs. Four Feathers Press.