Do you want to know about a day now, or a day before everything changed? Because honestly, I’m not sure what a day looks like anymore.

Before, I knew who I was. Sarah Carter, wife of Jeremy, mother of Noah and Abigail. Seattleite, with a beautiful home overlooking Lake Washington, a warm circle of friends, a busy life of volunteering and organizing and keeping my family safe. It was, and is, a life of privilege and I absolutely know it and am deeply grateful.

I was happy, very happy, before my husband got sick. Then, worried. Desperately worried. But even then, I have to say I never really believed Jeremy would leave us. Because he’d cheated death before, and because Jeremy Carter always got what he wanted.

He got me, didn’t he? That’s a joke—you can’t see that I’m smiling. Jeremy and I were meant for each other and we knew it.

And yet, we might not have gotten together if it hadn’t been for a terrible tragedy. That’s hard to admit. A man died. A woman’s sense of safety was destroyed. People’s lives were forever changed. I wish none of that had happened. And yet . . .

So now I’m back in Montana, at my family’s historic lodge on Bitterroot Lake. My mother wanted me to come home and help her clean the place out, decide whether to sell it. The McCaskill family has owned Whitetail Lodge for nearly a hundred years. Lots of big decisions to make, and I’m not talking about which set of railroad china to keep.

I’m talking about which secrets to keep and which ones to tell. Because I know something now that I didn’t know before.

Secrets really can kill you.

Bitterroot Lake
Genre: Suspense
Release: April 2021
Purchase Link

When four women separated by tragedy reunite at a lakeside Montana lodge, murder forces them to confront everything they thought they knew about the terrifying accident that tore them apart, in Agatha Award-winning author Alicia Beckman’s suspense debut.

Twenty-five years ago, during a celebratory weekend at historic Whitetail Lodge, Sarah McCaskill had a vision. A dream. A nightmare. When a young man was killed, Sarah’s guilt over having ignored the warning in her dreams devastated her. Her friendships with her closest friends, and her sister, fell apart as she worked to build a new life in a new city. But she never stopped loving Whitetail Lodge on the shores of Bitterroot Lake.

Now that she’s a young widow, her mother urges her to return to the lodge for healing. But when she arrives, she’s greeted by an old friend–and by news of a murder that’s clearly tied to that tragic day she’ll never forget.

And the dreams are back, too. What dangers are they warning of this time? As Sarah and her friends dig into the history of the lodge and the McCaskill family, they uncover a legacy of secrets and make a discovery that gives a chilling new meaning to the dreams. Now, they can no longer ignore the ominous portents from the past that point to a danger more present than any of them could know.

About the Author
Alicia Beckman makes her suspense debut with Bitterroot Lake (Crooked Lane Books, April 2021). As Leslie Budewitz, she’s a three-time Agatha-Award winner (2011, Best Nonfiction; 2013, Best First Novel; 2018, Best Short Story) and best-selling author of the Spice Shop mysteries, set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries, inspired by Bigfork, Montana, where she lives. A practicing lawyer, she’s a national board member of Mystery Writers of America and a past president of Sisters in Crime.

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