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In the summer of 1862, Edward Radcliffe, an up-and-coming young artist, takes a group of friends to the home he’s just bought in the country, next to the Thames: Birchwood Manor. An idyllic stay turns to tragedy when Edward’s fiancée is shot dead and a priceless family heirloom is reportedly stolen. Edward leaves the house and never returns; he dies an early death, never having recovered from the event.
In 2017, Elodie Winslow, an archivist, finds a leather satchel holding a sketchbook showing drawings of a twin-gabled house near a river and an old photo of a woman who is strikingly beautiful. The items transfix her — she is sure the house is the one in an old story she remembers her mother telling her as a child, even though that seems silly — and she sets out to find out more about the house and the woman.
The story of the house and the woman play out in Kate Morton’s latest novel. The spirit of the clockmaker’s daughter has lived in Birchwood Manor for more than a century, watching over it, remembering her life and her great love, and observing the people who have occasionally occupied the house with her through the decades.
The Clockmaker’s Daughter is a tale of love, of time and its passing, of connections between people and how even a house can be a living thing. As with any of Morton’s books, there’s a bit of a mystery that slowly unfolds over the course of the book: In this case, who is the clockmaker’s daughter? How did she come to haunt the house? What happened so long ago that fateful week? The answers come a bit at a time near the end.
This isn’t my favorite of Morton’s books; actually, I think it might be one of the weakest (and I’ve read all of them), but it was still a lovely read and fairly satisfying.
Rated: Mild. There are just a few instances of language, including a couple of the British variety that Americans don’t consider offensive, and violence is minimal. Sexual content is limited to just some veiled references and one quick scene where a young lady observes two other characters unclothed in an intimate moment.
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*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
