Fairlight: A Civil War-Era Novel of Family, Loyalty, and Consequence

They built Fairlight to hold a life together. One night would tear it apart. Perfect for readers of atmospheric historical fiction, slow-burning family sagas, restrained romance, and stories where love and consequence echo across generations. In 1857, Josephus Marlowe begins building a home in the Maryland hills-a place he hopes will endure long after he is gone. Then Hannah Mehring enters his life. Their courtship is quiet, deliberate, and restrained, shaped by faith, family, and a shared belief that some things are worth building carefully. Together, they name their home Fairlight and begin the life they imagined there. But beyond its fields, the country is coming apart. Old loyalties harden. Josephus and his younger brother Jacob find themselves increasingly divided by the questions pulling Carroll County, Maryland-and a nation-toward war. And as tensions close around Fairlight, choices made in anger begin carrying consequences no one can undo. Then, one September night, Fairlight falls. What happened there was never fully understood. But the consequences never faded. * * * More than a century later, no one can find the old house in the Taneytown woods. At least, that's the story. By 1997, Fairlight has become a local legend whispered among teenagers around Westminster: an abandoned house somewhere beyond the trees, and something waiting there that sends anyone who gets too close running back the way they came. Five friends decide to find it. What they discover at the end of an overgrown trail isn't the legend. It's the remains of Fairlight-and the story of the people who once called it home. * * * Some places don't let go. Some choices don't fade. And some nights never truly end. * * * A sweeping, multi-generational novel of love, family, inheritance, and consequence, Fairlight follows one Maryland family from the eve of the Civil War to the final years of the twentieth century-and asks what remains when the people we love are gone. Book Club Resources Available A free Fairlight Book Club Guide-including discussion questions, recipes, maps, and a playlist inspired by the novel-is available on the author's website.