Who doesn’t love an old castle, rife with secrets and lore and mystery? Of course, most readers tend to imagine Scotland or England when incorporating a good castle, but what about Midwestern Wisconsin? Believe it or not, Wisconsin boasts a castle or two, and they’re not necessarily White Castle, the home of the hamburger sliders.
It was with this (the castle, not the hamburgers) that I decided to write a dual-time Gothic mystery surrounding a castle, vanishing women over decades, with heroines who are determined to find the lost and save their tragedies from being unremembered.
Of course, taking inspiration from history is always a must and therefore as the author I entered the realm of study, focusing on one of the worst female serial killers known to humankind. Elizabeth Báthory, Hungarian countess, is most widely known as the woman whose fascination with the torture and bloodletting of young women took the lives of possibly hundreds in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. With this purported fascination, reports funneled in of not only the disappearance of local girls in the surrounding areas but also of women from the more notable families. This inspired an investigation that landed Elizabeth in solitary confinement in her castle until her death a couple of years later.
It was a gory and frankly horrific research journey to embark on. And then I looked into the validity of the charges against Elizabeth, only to find an everlasting doubt shed upon the accusation. Some suggest that the accusations and evidence of violent acts against women were begun by others in the nobility out of jealousy and slander created to undermine Elizabeth and her husband’s domain.
Whatever the case may be, this author’s mind was intrigued with the questions raised. What if there was a castle set in Wisconsin along the Mississippi River, and what if over the centuries women are purported to have entered the shadows of the castle and then vanished? A killer? A curse? A torturous history of unanswered questions? Women as victims of one who should have been their greatest protector—a woman herself?
I dove into the story with fervor. Daisy, a servant girl from the late 1800s coming to the employ of Madame Ora Tremblay, a Gothic horror authoress who has become an enigma in both literature and society. Cleo, a self-inflicted girl on the run who wants nothing more than to disappear as the women before her have, and who comes to the castle to get lost once and for all.
What each of these women find are not the answers they anticipated. When history and legend, curse and promise, and darkness and hope are all forced to face one another, which will come out the victor? Or does the story of The Vanishing at Castle Moreau end with the same questions as those of the life of Elizabeth Báthory? What is real, and what is merely a lie?
A haunting legend. An ominous curse. A search for a secret buried deep within the castle walls.
In 1870, orphaned Daisy François takes a position as housemaid at a Wisconsin castle to escape the horrors of her past life. There she finds a reclusive and eccentric Gothic authoress who hides tales more harrowing than the ones in her novels. As women disappear from the area and the eerie circumstances seem to parallel a local legend, Daisy is thrust into a web that could ultimately steal her sanity, if not her life.
In the present day, Cleo Clemmons is hired by the grandson of an American aristocratic family to help his grandmother face her hoarding in the dilapidated Castle Moreau. But when Cleo uncovers more than just the woman's stash of collectibles, a century-old mystery and the dust of the old castle's curse threaten to rise again . . . this time to leave no one alive to tell the sordid tale.
Award-winning author Jaime Jo Wright seamlessly weaves a dual-time tale of two women who must do all they can to seek the light amid the darkness shrouding Castle Moreau.
Women's Fiction [Bethany House Publishers, On Sale: April 4, 2023, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780764238345 / ]
Professional coffee drinker, Jaime Jo Wright, resides in the hills of Wisconsin. She loves to write spirited turn-of-the-century romance, stained with suspense. Her day job finds her as a Director of Sales & Development. She’s wife to a rock climbing, bow-hunting Pre-K teacher, mom to a coffee-drinking little girl, and a little boy she fondly refers to as her mischievous “Peter Pan”. Jaime completes her persona by being an admitted social media junkie and coffee snob. She is a member of ACFW and has the best writing sisters EVER!
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