For the past sixty years, Grace Masterson has never spoken about what happened at Janus Thoroughbred Farms. She had let the authorities assume what they had from the circumstantial evidence. Jodi Morgan is the young woman who has come to be Grace's companion and run the therapeutic riding program on the leased grounds of the crumbling ruins. Miserable in the eerie old mansion, Jodi struggles with the changes in her own life as she begins to unravel the mystery of the past.
The namesake of the powerful entity, Janus was the two-faced Roman god of transitions. One stared back at the past as the other gazed towards the future. The arc of the characters and even the setting itself follows these ideals to wind into a gripping finale with a surprising twist. It brings the reader to realize that this story not only touches them deeply, but has a great deal to say about the world in which we live. Like the Roman god, the story symbolizes the beginnings and endings of conflict, barbarism and civilization and the fragile essence of the human connection.
As Jodi manages the riding therapy program for children on the leased grounds, she discovers someone was murdered here in the 1940's. Frightened and miserable in the eerie mansion, she struggles with the changes in her own life as she unravels the mystery of the past. Steeped in the true history of North Carolina, the setting evolves like a well-developed character to immerse the reader into another time and place.
