After years away from home, Jesse Copeland has come back to the small town of Manzanita, and to the threat of madness she thought was behind her. Though she spends her days rescuing people from terrifying situations, it's the nights that Jesse dreads.

When Jesse was growing up in Manzanita, it was under the care of a mother the town remembered only as a drunk who'd eventually drowned herself in the river. What they recalled about Jesse was that at Joan Copeland's funeral she had gone mad and accused an innocent man of killing her worthless mother. They also remembered that little orphan Jesse had ended up in a mental institution.

Jesse returns to Manzanita with the thought of rebuilding her life and putting her difficult past far behind her. Manzanita had once been her home, and she intends to make it so again. Unfortunately, the people of this small town are not quite ready to accept her. Additionally, her mothers old boyfriend Gary is temporarily back in Manzanita, and with him have come all the cloudy but horrifying nightmares Jesse had hoped were gone forever.

One night, in the throws of an intense nightmare, Jesse screams to a man she used to know for help. A man named David.

And a "David" does indeed appear.

In life, David Ventris betrayed the woman he loved rather than relinquish his prescious freedom. But in wronging her, he'd lost his soul - and he's waited two centuries to get it back. In Jesse, he senses the soul of Sophie, the woman he'd loved and left, and he believes that if he can protect her from the danger she is in, and gain her love and - more importantly - her forgiveness, he will finally have the freedom in death that he so cherished in life.

Even the gorgeous cover doesn't do this book justice. Susan Krinard's well-written love story is exquisite, and she deftly combines historical, contemporary, and paranormal elements in a most believable way. This is my first experience of Susan Krinard, but I'll be back for more.
--K.D.