A Thrilling Debut Novel About Small Town Secrets and a Decades-Old Murder
Fortune: A Novel
Women's Domestic Life Fiction
Lake Union Publishing
October 1, 2023
Ebook, Audiobook, Paperback, Hardcover
347
In this explosive novel about a decades-old mystery, shocking revelations of the past and the secrets of three women will be spilled when a small Midwest town announces a DNA lottery. One drop of blood for a chance at a multimillion-dollar windfall. Is it a philanthropic gesture from a billionaire widow? Some suspect a darker motive behind the DNA lottery―one tied to the eighteen-year-old mystery of an infant’s unidentified remains that mars the history of idyllic Rosemary Hills, Iowa. Right after the blood lottery is announced, three local women fall under suspicion of knowing something about that night, and their carefully kept secrets threaten to spill out too. Cleo is a divorced single mom forced to return to her hometown and accept a strange job reading to an invalid recluse; Jemma is a controversial state senator whose reelection campaign and teenage daughter have her on edge; and Alex, a divorce attorney, copes with a crumbling marriage of her own and the suffocating presence of a cold, overbearing mother. Soon, unimaginable revelations of the past will collide with the present―and not just for Cleo, Jemma, and Alex. In this seemingly ordinary community, they aren’t the only ones with long-buried secrets.
Ellen Won Steil’s first published novel, Fortune: A Novel, is a thrilling story of hometown secrets and the mothers who hold them.
Fans of Liane Moriarty will want to read this novel that weaves the story of three women, Alex, Chloe, and Jemma, into a tangled web of buried secrets and personal battles. The story takes place in Rosemary Hills, a small Midwest town in Iowa that is home of Parker Inc, a multi-billion dollar company that suddenly announces a DNA lottery after the death of their founder, Jonathan Parker. Parker’s widow, Edie, offers a fortune to entice the residents of Rosemary Hills to submit a blood sample as a lottery ticket. The motive? To solve the mysterious murder of an infant whose remains were found 18 years before.
Alex, Chloe, and Jemma are the driving characters of the story and the main suspects in the death of “Baby Ava.” The story is told in a dual timeline of today (with the DNA lottery announced in early September) and the night of the alleged crime when the women were in high school in the early 2000s. Each chapter is told either from the point of view of one of the three women or Edie Parker, the organizer of the lottery. Although there are many perspectives and details to follow, Steil balances the pace in the beginning of the novel well. You have time to become invested in the characters and in the small town mystery. Each of the women’s family lives are complex; what ties them together is their motherhood, their friendship, and their past. They became unlikely friends when they were young and, although their lives took them into entirely different directions as adults, they found themselves converging back to each other and a single point in time.
It was though they were the Witches of Rosemary Hills. A trio of outcasts at this point, assembled around the table to determine their next move. It didn’t matter what choices they had made since that night eighteen years ago to catapult them away from it. It was a game of chess they could never win, carrying them back together, no matter what. This was their bond. This was the inevitable cost of what they’d done.
A statement from Steil’s short bio in the back of the book really struck me: “she believes most good stories have at least a hint of darkness in them.” Steil does not shy away from allowing truly dark and terrifying moments touch this story, but they never linger too long or in too much detail. The reader sees brokenness in all the characters. We see struggles for power as well, including the power one’s past can hold over you. When the three women decide to reclaim themselves from their own secrets, we see their lives begin to change.
Her eyes flew open.
A voice inside her could not be silenced any longer. It was a deep-rooted seed filled with a power she suddenly possessed.
He stopped, startled by her glare.
She flashed her eyes at him with everything she had, wide and potent. She wasn’t going to look away. Not anymore. Every muscle in her face was weak, her lips barely able to move. But she forced it once.
A small rasping call.
“No.”
Fair warning to the reader: once you start the last few chapters of this book, you will not want to put it down. Fuses that I did not even realize were lit chapters before suddenly exploded on the page before me, creating a series of twists and turns that made me breathless. More than once I wanted to turn back to previous parts of the story and look for those little details that I missed in the unfolding of the story. I’m telling you — grab some snacks and a comfy pillow, turn off your phone, and tell the people in your household to not bother you for a few hours. You are not going to want to stop the ride that Steil takes you on as the story builds to its thrilling conclusion.
Trigger warning: This story depicts instances of child abuse and predatory behavior.
Celeste is a woman who is unwavering about certain things in life; three of those being books, cats, and cold brew coffee. If she can enjoy all three at the same time, it’s going to be a good day. Her favorite genres are fantasy or sci-fi romance, historical romance, and historical fiction but every few books she likes to mix it up with contemporary fiction, a good psychological thriller, or an inspiring memoir. She has a busy schedule working full-time for an online university but she makes sure to unwind each day with stories, either by reading to her elementary school-aged daughter or tucking herself in bed with her Kindle or the latest book she picked up at a local book store.
