Gold Star County

By: Vernon Powell

Narrated by: Olivia Coughlin

Cliff Reagon is a newspaper reporter for the Old Hickory Gazette in Sugar Creek, Indiana, and he is good at it. It is 1946, and World War II has mercifully ended. Most of Sugar Creek, Indiana’s beloved boys, came home as changed men… damaged goods but lucky to be home.

Cliff’s spunky younger sister, Bea, is fresh out of journalism school and has snagged a job alongside her brother at the newspaper. She is thrilled to begin living her dream. Less than a month after Bea joined the Gazette, Sugar Creek experiences a brutal murder. Clara Blystone, the victim, was a young single mother whose battered body was left inside an already infamous, long-neglected cemetery mausoleum.

For Sugar Creek, It was the first murder of a woman in over thirty-five years. Despite caution from her brother, Bea occasionally slips out of her role as a print journalist and slides into the unofficial role of detective. Her amateur investigative work eventually pairs her with the murdered woman’s roommate, Gracie.

Gracie, who barely graduated from high school, has a bit of “history” according to a few folks around Sugar Creek, IN this dark-and-light, often humorous but sometimes disturbing, thriller, an unlikely friendship between the two polar opposites develops. The two self-appointed sleuths make for an odd duo… but they are a duo that is hell-bent on finding the murderer. As should have been expected, Bea and Gracie find themselves up to their necks in danger before Sheriff Donald Pritchard can zero-in on the killer.

Sheriff Pritchard may not be likable, but he is a damn good investigator and, uncharacteristically for the hardcore sheriff, this case is personal. Years ago, high-school-aged Donald Pritchard had a crush on classmate, and now victim, Clara Blystone. At an interesting time in US history, this post-war story begins on the streets of “Little Italy” in Chicago and wanders through Sugar Creek, Indiana. The tale reaches a tense conclusion inside the gates of Shade Valley Cemetery. Enjoy, Vernon Powell

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