A novel by Jane Basta about the lives of twin sisters who have not seen each other since 1972. Mare Amy Silkes and Maeve Aggie Gordon were four years old when their father took Mare Amy away from the Descendants of David religious compound in Florida to live in Trinidad, Colorado. The girls’ mother, Day Jean LeBarre, stayed behind in the compound with Maeve Aggie and two-year-old Telly Mark.
A series of lies and mistaken police reports, followed by a devastating fire at the compound, convince each of the surviving family members that the others are dead.
At thirty years old Maeve Aggie, twice married and living in Florida, is battered and viciously raped by her husband. At the same time, almost two thousand miles away in Trinidad, Colorado, twin Mare Amy finds bruises on her own body. A dream and an improbable coincidence start the sisters searching for one another and for the little brother neither has seen in twenty-eight years.
The story is set in the now mostly quiet mining country around Trinidad, Colorado. A community-based experiment in the treatment of battered women and their children unfolds deep in the rugged southern Colorado mountains. Anti-government patriots, together with a remnant of the area's older Mafia culture, bring an element of violence to a story that is already painfully graphic. |
