Stranger in the Cove

As 60 year old midwife Samantha Higgins leaves John Kelly's house, having witnessed the miracle of a baby being stillborn but miraculously reviving, little did she know that the stranger she meets along the road back to the settlement will soon be dead; that the investigation into his death will unravel a years old mystery of the strange behavior of Robert Hudson; reveal a death long thought to have been an accident to be murder; and uncover a story John Kelly would have preferred remained a secret.. It's 1878. Sam Higgins lives in secluded Hudson Cove in the North Georgia Mountains. Living with Sam is Mandy, the 18 year old daughter of an ex-slave family who Sam is training to be her successor as the only "doctor" in the Cove. A stranger to the Cove is murdered. Another stranger appears on Sam's doorstep, injured in a mysterious accident somehow connected with the murder. Sam, Sam's Deputy Sheriff son Jake, Mandy, and her brother Sampson, investigate and find that the death of the stranger is connected with mysteries surrounding Robert Hudson, Civil War veteran and son of the most prominent family in the cove, who seemed different after the war in ways not fully explained by the injuries and horrors he experienced.