An 83-year-old obituary writer for a struggling, small-town newspaper
finds herself embroiled in intrigue, stumbling onto the story of her
career: a country girl has gone missing, perhaps whisked away by an
itinerant aerial photographer. Or so it seems. It all could be simply a
hoax, or a delusion, the child and child-thief invented from the
desperate imagination of a lonely, lovelorn farm woman. The fragility of
childhood, the strength of family, and the powerful rumor mills of
small, rural towns--The Coffins of Little Hope tells the story of
characters caught in the intricately woven webs of myth, legend and
deception.
Esther Myles, an obituary writer in her eighties working for a
struggling small-town newspaper, finds herself embroiled in intrigue,
stumbling upon the story of her career as the story of the girl reaches
far and wide, igniting controversy, attracting curiosity-seekers from
all over the country to this dying rural town. And what do the gothic
tales of Miranda and Desiree, the storybook sisters of Muscatine's
series of novels, play in this town's survival and in the enduring
mystery of Lenore?