A gathering misery

Some demons are of our own making; some make us. A family teeters on the verge of collapse, wracked by a despair as scorching as the Alabama summer. Deborah Ballard, on the cusp of adolescence, is pushed away by her grieving parents into the overbearing arms of the grandmother who has vowed to straighten her out. Hers is a family rooted to secrets, whose demons threaten to shatter a veneer of carefully-crafted control. It is a family tethered to a past that reaches beyond the grave. Deborah is no stranger to death. A malevolence shrouds the women of her family, demanding a blood price from each daughter, generation by generation. Will Deborah be able to break the cycle of cruelty that mars the family name, or is she destined to be another pawn in the insidious legacy of Clemenceau's daughters? -- Amazon.com.