Woman In Red

Woman in Red by Eileen Goudge
Contemporary Fiction
Quit on 8/5/07
Rating: DNF





Publisher's Blurb:

A powerful story of love and redemption, and what one woman will do to overcome the buried secrets of her past.

Alice Kessler spent nine years in prison for the attempted murder of the drunk driver who killed her son. Now she's returned home to Gray's Island to reconnect with the son she left behind. Her boy, Jeremy, now a sullen teenager, is wrongly accused of rape, and mother and son are thrown together in a desperate attempt to prove his innocence. She's aided by Colin McGinty, a recovering alcoholic and 9/11 widower, also recently returned to the island in the aftermath of his grandfather's death. Colin's grandfather, a famous artist, is best known for his haunting portrait, "Woman in Red," which happens to be of Alice's grandmother.

In a tale that weaves the past with the present, we come to know the story behind the portrait, of the forbidden wartime romance between William McGinty and Eleanor Styles, and the deadly secret that bound them more tightly than even their love for each other. A secret that, more than half a century later, is about to be unburied, as Alice and Colin are drawn into a fragile romance of their own and the ghost of an enemy from long ago surfaces in the form of his grandson, the very man responsible for sending Alice to prison.


Not really my cuppa, but a dear friend sent me her copy, knowing I was heading out to the Pacific Northwest for two weeks. The story's fictional island is based on one that I visited briefly years ago (Orcas Island), but not on my recent trip. Unfortunately, I couldn't get interested in the story and didn't care for any of the characters. I gave up after 140 pages.