Shannon Devlin arrives in Charleston with nothing and receives forty-eight acres of river lowland and an old mansion that the locals believe is haunted. The deed is clean. The land is not. Senator Hamilton Pinckly calls it a reward; Shannon suspects it's an invitation to experience the "luck of the Irish".On the overgrown property stands the Trahan mansion, shuttered for half a century, its owner buried "somewhere" on the grounds and a rumor rooted deeper than any live oak; a fortune in gold, hidden and defended by a presence that never left. Inside, the house remembers. A journal surfaces, a sketchbook opens, and a name crosses pages and decades...Ombre. Meanwhile, Shannon found a dog that follows him everywhere...like a Shadow. When the mysterious canine vanishes, the past starts answering back.In 1789s Versailles, France, Dominique de Bergeron, the queen's favorite storyteller at the Petit Trianon, accepts an art commission that will press her fate against the ambitious painter Will Trahan and send echoes toward a coast she has never seen.Two histories spiral toward the same locked door: one boy's "luck," one artist's secret, and one old house that has been waiting. If Shannon opens what Charleston has kept closed, he may unearth more than treasure...he may awaken a legend that was meant to remain buried.
