National Network for Equitable Library Service

The Blackman & Robertson Detective Agency faces a disturbing reality: no clients. So when Nakayla Robertson suggests a mushroom hunt at the historic, freed-slave commune The Kingdom of the Happy Land, Sam Blackman reluctantly agrees. Hunting the elusive edible, he stumbles into a rotting log... with a skeleton hidden inside! As intrigued as Sam is, this isn’t his case. So the local authorities tell him to butt out. Then Marsha Montgomery comes to Asheville asking Sam and Nakayla to investigate a 45-year-old burglary at her mother’s home. Someone stole a rifle and a photograph of Marsha’s mother, grandmother, and great grandmother taken in 1932 by renowned photographer Doris Ulmann. The site of the photograph is The Kingdom of the Happy Land. Marsha’s visit is no coincidence. Sam’s being played. But why? When Marsha’s 85-year-old mother Lucille is arrested for murder, Sam knows there is something amiss. Is the skeleton that of Jimmy Lang, Lucille’s lover and Martha’s father, a white man who disappeared in 1967? It appears that Jimmy had been willing to walk away from a budding family empire to marry Lucille. So why had Lucille, who is black, refused to marry him? Did others stand to benefit from Jimmy’s disappearance? A veil of betrayal and deceit hides a killer desperate to protect a dark secret, and no one, not even Sam, is safe from the deadly consequences of a murder in passing.