Reconciliation: Atone the Devil In Buried Sunshine

by Carolyn P. Hartley

Adele Dawson, finally back with her West Virginia birth family, is driven to learn why her father died so young and why her mother remarried despicable August Beck, a con artist, then gave birth to eight of his children. When her half-sisters also come to live with her, they get wise to a secret museum of treasures in Adele’s once-lavish stone mansion. She unlocks secrets inside a locked trunk about her mother’s coerced life in corruption, greed, and extortion, secrets that now threaten to extinguish the entire family. Her paternal grandmother’s final wish is that Adele rebuild the family’s coal mine, nearly bankrupt from the Depression, and restore the river stone mansion to its original beauty. The more involved she becomes in the mining business, the more she discovers her mother’s enemies have concealed themselves within the family business. On the verge of gaining trust from superstitious coal miners, her saboteur stepfather creates mine blasts that injure workers, forcing the reconstruction to miss critical deadlines.
Set in a pre-World War II coal mining town. Impeccably researched.

341 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 4, 2022

Reviews

[Annette Summerfield]

Adele still has a whole lot a head of her especially with Jackson being head of her mines. Jackson and Adele are going to be around each other everyday.
Tommy seemed like a skinny boyish sort. I still kept feeling like he had something hidden. His love for Adele just seemed overdone. Maybe I'm wrong.
Jackson seemed more natural and manly.
August...Okay this got me. Mean, not nice, hated......Nice guy. What?
Nope, I couldn't like the guy. The girls spent the whole first part of the book talking about how horrible a man is was.
I liked that Irving and Giles had a chance to come help out against all the bad guys and gals.
Adele still has a long way to go to get the mine up and running and raising all those sisters of hers. Plus 1 boy.
At times it got a bit lengthy and I flipped through, but over all the enemies against her taking over the mines and her parent's past kept me moving right along.

[Ashley Turner]

I really enjoyed the family drama and mystery woven throughout this story. Adele’s journey especially kept me interested because she isn’t just trying to uncover the truth about her family, she’s also trying to rebuild what was left behind and find her place within it.

I found the secrets surrounding her mother, the family business, and the coal mine particularly intriguing. The West Virginia setting and pre-World War II backdrop also gave the story a strong historical atmosphere.

What I liked most was the theme of facing the past while trying to create a better future. There’s plenty of family tension, betrayal, and resilience here, and I found myself wanting to know what Adele would uncover next. Overall, it was an interesting and emotional historical family drama with plenty of secrets to keep things moving.

[Debra H. Wruble]

Amazing

Well written story about a family of girls the eldest of which becomes the heiress to her grandmother's fortune which includes ownership of coal mines. Action and romance abound. Great read

[GG]

The Good, The Bad in West Virginia

Thank you Carolyn, love the Series of “Delly”, her sisters and the villains and hero’s in her life. I hope you will continue with the story of the Dawsons and Beck girls. Loved the historical facts of the time

[patricia basinger]

Who edited this?

So many ridiculous mistakes made what would be a good book hard to read. Simple things like characters' names and clearly not remembering something that was in book 1.

[Tina Gerber]

not believable

Bones of the story is good but the details and jumping from event to event made for a difficult read- so many parts were not believable and just didn’t make sense