Chapter One
September 1712
Hereford, Connecticut
“Mother, what are these papers? I found them at the bottom of the trunk whilst fetching the quilts.”
Mary Case glanced up from her sewing as she bit off the thread.
Her eighteen-year-old daughter Kezia stood before her. The girl’s green eyes, so like her father’s, glittered with curiosity. It was a pleasant September morning, and Mary had just enough time to finish hemming a neighbor’s skirt before her husband, Kezia’s stepfather, returned home for supper. Alarm blanched her already-pallid face
even before she saw the bundle of sealed parchment in her daughter’s long-fingered hand.
“Are they letters?” the young woman pressed. “My name is on it above the seal—”
The skirt fell from Mary’s lap as she rose from the large rock she’d been sitting on. Even as she reached out for the papers, Kezia pressed them to her chest possessively. “It’s about who my real father is, isn’t it?” the girl speculated, color draining from her own pretty face.
Mary’s eyes left Kezia’s and regarded the packet of letters with trepidation.
Letters to Kezia Description:
It is 1693 in Hereford, Connecticut, when Mary Case, the spinster daughter of a Puritan minister, finds herself hopelessly smitten by the roguish thief, Daniel Eames. Betrothed to a man she does not like or love, she is soon compelled to help Daniel escape from jail. Suddenly, she finds herself on the run, not only accused of being Daniel’s accomplice, but also of murder.
The fugitive pair soon finds solace—and a mutual attraction—among the escapee’s Algonquin friends until two men from Daniel’s dark past hunt them down. After Mary is captured and returned home to await trial, a tragedy takes the life of her younger sister, revealing a dark secret Mary’s father has kept for months. But just as Mary learns she is pregnant, she makes a horrifying discovery about Daniel that changes everything and prompts her to develop an unlikely bond with his mother, Rebecca, who soon saves Mary from a shocking fate. It is not until years later that her daughter, Kezia, finally learns the truth about her biological father and family.
Letters to Kezia shares a courageous woman’s journey through a Puritan life and beyond as she struggles with adversity and betrayal, and discovers that loyalty can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.
