Winner of the 2004 Mary Higgins Clark Award
and the 2004 Oklahoma Book Award for Fiction
“Get to your public library or local book store and get this book. Now…. This is one of the best mysteries I’ve read
in a very long time.” —Mystery News
“… An intriguing, engrossing novel with an engaging main character…. The characters are richly drawn and likable, the sense of place is strong, and the plot adds layers page after page until the exciting climax.” —ForeWord Magazine
Acclaimed mystery writer Marcia K. Preston returns with her second Chantalene mystery. Filled with mistaken identities, waking dreams of a strange, lost girl, a bogus oil company, robbery, murder, a crazy hermit, and a handsome cowboy, Song of the Bones is sure to thrill Preston’s growing fan base.
Tetumka, Oklahoma’s friendly postmistress, Thelma Patterson, and Chantalene Morrell’s surrogate aunt, -retains Drew Sander’s legal services with Chantalene as his assistant. Billy Ray Patterson, the younger man Thelma married thirty years before, disappeared soon -after. And now Thelma needs to find him. An oil company wants to lease Thelma’s land for exploration, but Billy Ray’s name is still on the property and she needs to clear the title. They assume he’s dead, that is until a handsome cowboy claiming to be Billy Ray shows up in Tetumka and moves in with Thelma. After a few days, Thelma is convinced the man living in her house is not her husband.
Meanwhile, Chantalene has problems of her own. -Personal items are missing from her house, and she’s haunted by waking dreams of a strange, lost girl she doesn’t know. Is she losing her mind? Chantalene has mounting suspicions that someone is stalking her.
Chantalene learns the story of Thelma’s once-in-a–lifetime romance with her handsome younger man and follows his cold trail to New Mexico. Once Chantalene comes to the conclusion that the man in Thelma’s house is not Billy Ray, but his long-thought-dead brother Donnie Ray, things turn sinister. And the danger is just beginning . . .
Marcia K. Preston grew up on a wheat farm in Oklahoma, near a town not too different from the setting of her mystery series featuring Chantalene Morrell. The first book in the series, Perhaps She’ll Die, was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award for suspense fiction, and for Macavity and Barry awards in the Best First Mystery -division.
