BLOOD STAINS is the first in a new trilogy by Sharon Sala
which features three sisters who learn upon the death of
their father that they are not true sisters. The
people they thought were their biological parents were not
and in fact never even legally adopted them.
BLOOD STAINS is Maria's story. Though she is not
the oldest hers is the first story told. As a toddler,
Maria witnessed her mother's murder. Though she should know
who committed the horrendous crime, she has no memory of the
event. Upon learning how she came to live with Andrew Slade,
she decides to return to Tulsa, the place of her birth, and
find her mother's killer.
Arriving in Tulsa does not immediately reset Maria's memory,
which for readers is good, because if it did where would the
story be? Maria however is not a dummy and she knows she'll
need help in solving her mother's murder and for that she
turns to the police department where she meets Detective
Bodie Scott. Bodie and Maria not only have to fight the
unknown to discover who killed Sally Blake, Maria's mother,
but their attraction to one another.
Ms. Sala is an author whose words instantly draw you into
the story. BLOOD STAINS is no exception. As I found
myself engrossed in Maria's story, I noticed the things I
needed to be doing slipping to the wayside.
I have to be honest and say that for several Sala novels I
was not a fan, but with her Storm Front series from last
year, and with this year's The Searchers novel Ms. Sala has
put herself back on my must read list.
At the reading of her father's will, Maria Slade receives
shocking news—as a four-year-old, she'd witnessed her
prostitute mother's murder and been taken into hiding by
the well-meaning preacher who'd raised her as his own.
Maria remembers none of that. But now she's determined to
flush her mother's killer out of hiding and discover the
identity of her birth father. She heads to Tulsa,
Oklahoma, where she meets Detective Bodie Scott.
Empathizing with this beautiful woman looking to find out
who she really is, he opens the decades-old case file.
Their investigation leads them down a dangerous path,
where no one is what they seem. Where a father does not
want to be found. And a murderer has "like mother, like
daughter" in mind for Maria.
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