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Shadows of a Down East Summer: An Antique Print Mystery    by Lea Wait Amazon.com order for
Shadows of a Down East Summer
by Lea Wait
Order:  USA  Can
Perseverance Press, 2011 (2011)
Softcover
* *   Reviewed by Mary Ann Smyth

Shadows of a Down East Summer takes place in Maine, in the fictitious town of Waymouth. Artist Winslow Homer is not fictional although most of the people surrounding the artist in this neat mystery are.

Antique prints dealer Maggie Summer and her beau Will Brewer visit his elderly Aunt Nettie on the coast of Maine. They both plan to buy and sell antiques as well as enjoying their surroundings.

Through the death of a recent acquaintance, Maggie falls heir to a journal kept by a young woman who posed for Homer's paintings in the summer of 1890. Homer never married or had children to any one's knowledge, but a family claims to be direct descendents of the man.

The journal becomes very important to the history of the area at that point in time, as well as a device to clear Homer's name.

Lea Wait is a fourth generation antiques dealer, and Shadows of a Down East Summer is the fifth in the Maggie Summer series. Maggie is an antique prints dealer and I found the description of an old print at the beginning of each chapter intriguing. It's a good, tightly written mystery with gobs of history thrown in for good measure. Right up my alley.

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