The Woman in the Photo: A Novel

In this compulsively-readable historical novel, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Two Sisters, comes the story of two young womenone in Americas Gilded Age, one in scrappy modern-day Californiawhose lives are linked by a single tragic afternoon in history. 1888: Elizabeth Haberlin, of the Pittsburgh Haberlins, spends every summer with her family on a beautiful lake in an exclusive club. Nestled in the Allegheny Mountains above the working class community of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the private retreat is patronized by societys elite. Elizabeth summers with Carnegies, Mellons, and Fricks, following the rigid etiquette of her class. But Elizabeth is blessed (cursed) with a mind of her own. Case in point: her friendship with Eugene Eggar, a Johnstown steel mill worker. And when Elizabeth discovers that the clubs poorly maintained dam is about to burst and send 20 million tons of water careening down the mountain, she risks all to warn Eugene and the townspeople in the lakes deadly shadow. Present day: On her eighteenth birthday, genetic information from Lee Parkers closed adoption is unlocked. She also sees an old photograph of a genetic relativea 19th Century woman with hair and eyes likes hersstanding in a pile of rubble from an ecological disaster next to none other than Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross. Determined to identify the woman in the photo and unearth the mystery of that captured moment, Lee digs into history. Her journey takes her from California to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, from her present financial woes to her past of privilege, from the daily grind to an epic disaster. Once Lees heroic DNA is revealed, will she decide to forge a new fate?