Devil's Key

[this] Florida native breathes life into all her characters -- dead or alive. --St. Augustine RecordLucy Fowler plans to spend winter break on an island off the coast of Florida to finish writing her thesis. She needs one last interview with an elderly midwife. Lucy almost cancels the trip after shes brutally assaulted on campus. But in the end she goes hoping work will be therapeutic.On remote isolated Ibo Key Lucy learns midwife Esther Day is now confined to a psychiatric ward. She also learns that there was once a thriving black community Revelation on the island. Its residents all vanished one night long ago. Lucy decides to write about the ghost town but no one will talk about what happened. Eventually she uncovers the terrible story behind the towns destruction. Esthers rival Soulange once owned a mysterious book . . . a centuries old grimoire revealing the arcana of Obeah. An odd little man tells Lucy the island is cursed. That every man woman and child on it will soon die. And she begins to see glimpses of the past.But by then shes stranded trapped by a killer hurricane. To escape she must face her own connection to both the victims and perpetrators of a long-ago massacre . . . a crime so monstrous it invites the arrival of an evil old as time.Devils Key was originally published by Egmont Boker Oslo in 1999 as Svart Frikt. This Northampton House Press trade paperback edition is the first in the English language.