Family Fortune

by Mignon G. Eberhart

A West Virginia mansion and conflicting loyalties to North and South complicate a young woman's involvement in an inheritance dispute during the Civil War.

Genres: Mystery, Romance

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Mignon Good (1899-1996) was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. She studied at Nebraska Wesleyan University from 1917 to 1920. In 1923 she married Alanson C. Eberhart, a civil engineer. After working as a freelance journalist, she decided to become a full-time writer. In 1929 her first crime novel was published featuring 'Sarah Keate', a nurse and 'Lance O'Leary', a police detective. This couple appeared in another four novels. In the Forties, she and her husband divorced. She married John Hazen Perry in 1946 but two years later she divorced him and remarried her first husband. Over the next forty years she wrote a novel nearly every year. In 1971 she won the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America. She also wrote many short stories featuring banker/amateur sleuth James Wickwire (who could be considered a precursor to Emma Lathen's John Putnam Thatcher) and mystery writer/amateur sleuth Susan Dare.

Reviews

[Scilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Eberhart's mysteries, but this one was a romance (which I don't particularly like) about a family in West Virginia during the civil war. The father dies leaving three sons from his first wife (two oldest married), a daughter (Lucinda) from his second wife aged (17) and step son from his second wife (a local doctor). The second son, Marsh, is in the Union army and the third, John, is in the Confederate army. The oldest son, Jeff, and his wife, Dolly expected to inherit the entire tobacco plantation. However, when he reads the will, portions are given to George (the slave overseer), and the other two sons; then the remainder is to be split between Jeff and Lucinda. However, until Lucinda is 18 (or married), Jeff and Dolly will be guardians and trustees. The will also stipulates that all the slaves are to be taken care of and given their freedom. Jeff and Dolly are determined to do everyone else out of their inheritances and sell the slaves before they can be freed. The remainder of the book is about the shinagins of Jeff and Dolly, and the determination of Lucinda to keep her portion of the plantation., One attempt is to marry a cousin who has sought help at the plantation after being wounded. Of course, Jeff and Dolly do not recognize the marriage, make the justice who married her disappear, and steal the marriage certificate.

[Lu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Civil war divides the Chance family.

Read years ago.