The ghost at the table

the long version

"Strikingly different since childhood and leading dissimilar lives now, sisters Frances and Cynthia have managed to remain "devoted"--As long as they stay on opposite coasts. When Frances arranges to host Thanksgiving at her idyllic New England farmhouse, she envisions a happy family reunion, one that will include the sisters' long-estranged father. Cynthia, however, doesn't understand how Frances can ignore the past their father's presence revives, a past that includes suspicions about their mother's death twenty-five years earlier. As Thanksgiving Day arrives, with a houseful of guests looking forward to dinner, the sisters continue to struggle with different versions of a shared past, their conflict escalating to a dramatic, suspenseful climax."--Publisher's website. The Fiske family is gathered at the exquisitely restored New England home of the second of three sisters. The family table groans with the weight of guilt and blame. The result is the taut story of a 21st-century family's unraveling, played against a famous 19th-century writer's own family dysfunction.