Enlarged Print Edition

Book Club Reading Guide

A threatened cemetery. An ancestor’s will. Dark secrets revealed. Where heritage and power collide, some truths are too dangerous to print.

Reporter Leni Spencer’s investigation into the sudden death of Muriel Banks, a beloved town matriarch, unearths missing records and buried secrets in her Missouri hometown. Muriel’s daughter, Elizabeth Banks, is shattered by grief. Determined to honor her mother’s memory by preserving a neglected Black cemetery, she turns to Leni for help. The trail leads them, to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, where a Monacan elder—a memory keeper—guards stories that could shift the balance of power back home.

What they uncover is more than genealogy—it’s a trail of land disputes, political ambition, and a vanished will that could alter the future of the town. Mayor Coralee Coleman has her own plans for the cemetery land, and not everyone welcomes the truths Leni stirs up.

Detective Doug Joseph—both an ally in the investigation and the man who has captured Leni’s heart—urges her to leave the sleuthing to him. But Leni knows that Muriel’s dream is slipping away. To protect the past, and the people she loves, she must decide how far she’s willing to go.

But some histories were meant to stay hidden. As old grievances collide with present-day ambitions, Leni must decide how much truth to reveal—before the past rewrites the future.

The Past Is Not at Rest is a heartland mystery about history that refuses to stay buried, the bonds of community, and the courage it takes to confront uncomfortable truths.