Genevieve (Genna) Summerford, a young psychotherapist from a socially prominent family, and her beau, Simon Shaw, a captain in the Tammany political machine and the proprietor of a fledgling horse farm in upstate New York, are at an auction in the City, where Simon\u2019s first yearling is up for bid. While they\u2019re celebrating Fair Corner Farm\u2019s first successful sale, Genna\u2019s longtime friend, Bartie Matheson, learns that his oyster business\u2013owning father, Edgar, has just died in an accidental fall down the stairs. Within several days of the funeral, Bartie and his brother, Ned, have their grief-stricken mother placed in a private sanitarium. When Genna, under the guise of a family medical consultant, visits their mother, she realizes that not only has May been misdiagnosed as a hysteric, but also that Edgar\u2019s fatal plunge involves some serious questions. As she delves more deeply into the oyster industry on Long Island Sound, she discovers that the business is rife with rivalries, thievery, and unsavory machinations that could point to murder. Threaded throughout Overholt\u2019s intriguing cozy mystery (part of the Dr. Genevieve Summerford Mysteries series) are Genna\u2019s and Simon\u2019s painful backstories and the ongoing challenges of their socially unconventional relationship. She\u2019s of high breeding, while he\u2019s a Catholic Irish immigrant who once worked as her father\u2019s stable boy: \u201cpedigree isn\u2019t everything,\u201d he pointedly remarks to a blue-blooded horse fancier. While low on dramatic tension, the novel firmly confronts the endemic mistreatment of female patients by the medical community and misogynistic attitudes toward female physicians. The most fascinating element is the author\u2019s intricate depiction of the surprising complexities of the oyster industry on Long Island Sound. The novel is breezily narrated by Genna, whose voice reveals a woman who knows her own mind and is determined to stand up to family and societal constraints.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Genevieve (Genna) Summerford, a young psychotherapist from a socially prominent family, and her beau, Simon Shaw, a captain in the Tammany political machine and the proprietor of a fledgling horse farm in upstate New York, are at an auction in the City, where Simon\u2019s first yearling is up for bid. While they\u2019re celebrating Fair Corner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}