My name is Felicity O’Brien, and I should warn you my life is anything but exciting. For example, this morning I’m touching up the sign at the end of my driveway. With my dad in a home, as we call it out here in West Woodbury, I’m now the sole owner of Tall Tree Farm, which means I patch the roof, feed the sheep, tend the garden, and manage the forestry side. The sheep belong to a group of fiber artists who got the idea that raising their own wool would give them an edge in the world of handmade goods. I don’t know if it has or not, but it’s led to an unexpected additional stream of income for me, and if you know anything about small farms, you know that’s a good thing. I’ve even gotten used to coming home on a Saturday afternoon to find a couple of women standing at easels and painting the sheep inside the paddock or sitting in the kitchen painting the old beams and drying rosemary. My cat, Miss Anthropy, ignores them, but the dog, Shadow, is so intimidated by strangers that he hides underneath the sofa.

Most days I’m up at five-thirty, and still working long past dark. I love being outside and getting dirty, doing physical work, whatever needs doing. If something seems too much for me—taking down a tree I’ve let grow too big too close to the house, for example—I call on friends, usually Jeremy Colson, who is more than a friend, and one way or another, we get the problem taken care of. But right now I’m getting ready for a visitor. That’s a euphemism.

Somewhere in the dim past the women in my family, on my mother’s side, discovered a rare talent. It must have come to light during an especially harrowing period in their lives because we pretty much keep this to ourselves. So don’t talk about it. That’s one of the first things my mother taught me, right after she showed me how to properly lay my hands on our injured dog, Penny. But it’s hard to keep this kind of thing a secret.

I don’t know how far back all this goes, but every now and then I meet people who knew my grandmother, Faith, in a certain way, as they put it, and of course my mother, Charity. But then there are the stories Faith told about her mother, Hope, and grandmother, Devotion. But now we’re back in the mid 1800s, when war and famine and general dislocation seem to have broken a thread.

The gift, as we call it, is simple enough. We draw out pain and illness, but we can’t change the future and we can’t eradicate disease if the time has come. I can usually tell what’s going on when I touch someone. Mostly we ease someone’s path through life. Simple enough.

This is the quiet side of my life. The rest is pretty normal—work. I sell timber and have a thriving vegetable stand, along with the sheep and visiting artists. Occasionally I do bookkeeping for local businesses, for reliable income. I watch the weather, like everyone else out here, and take breaks with my unofficial mother-in-law, Loretta Colson. Most of us try to get along, not ruffle any feathers in our small community. Loretta seems set on proving you can live seventy years without ever saying a nice word to anyone. Between that and the beer, she’s a handful.

Enough talking. Time to get back to work. If you come to visit, wear sturdy shoes and we’ll take a walk in the woods.

You can read more about Felicity in Beyond the Tree Line, the first book in the NEW “Pioneer Valley” mystery series.

In the Massachusetts countryside, family secrets run deep, until an outside influence threatens to tear apart a close-knit community.

Felicity O’Brien hopes the warning shot fired from her porch is enough to scare off the intruder who’s been snooping around her family’s farm. Days later, when two young women are found dead nearby, Felicity can’t figure out how the deaths are related, and even her inherited healing touch isn’t enough to ease the community’s pain over the tragic loss.

Felicity only knows that somebody wants something bad enough to kill for it, but all she has is the worn-out property her parents passed down to her. Joining forces with her friend Jeremy Colson, Felicity tries to uncover the truth and save herself and her land from those who would do her harm.

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Meet the author
Susan Oleksiw is the author of the Mellingham mystery series and the Anita Ray mystery series. Beyond the Tree Line, her first installment in the “Pioneer Valley” mystery series, debut on September 8 from Midnight Ink.

Born and raised in New England, Susan Oleksiw has long been fascinated by the traditional New Englander and the way of life found there. She is the co-founder of Level Best Books, which publishes an annual anthology of the best New England crime fiction. Her writing has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery and she has served as coeditor for The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing.

Before she entered into a life of crime, Susan studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received a PhD in Asian studies. The author has also spent time living in India, and her fondness for the country lives on through her passion for photography. You can see more on all of her mystery series, as well as featured snapshots of her travels to India at SusanOleksiw.com.

All comments are welcomed.