Michelle Black

Seance in Sepia Michelle Black

Enter the world of the Victorian occult... Before Flynn Keirnan bought an antique photograph at an estate sale, she had never heard of spirit photography, but when the bidding on eBay for the strange old photo soars past a thousand dollars, she knows she must discover the story behind mysterious picture before the auction ends. She soon learns the eerie images of a young woman and two men posed in the photograph were the subjects of a sensational murder trial in 1875 Chicago.   A young architect was accused of killing his wife and his best friend in what the local press dubbed The Free Love Murders. Flynn tracts the story through many sources, including the trial transcript, a journal kept by one of the victims, and notes from a jailhouse interview with the husband conducted by none other than feminist firebrand Victoria Woodhull for her radical newspaper. Since Victoria Woodhull was a spiritualist before she became the first female candidate for president and the most widely known proponent of Free Love, she was asked by the accused husband to contact the spirits of his wife and friend to find out how they really died. Were the deaths a double homicide, as the prosecution claims, a double suicide, as the distraught husband fears, or a murder-suicide and, if so, who killed whom?  As the jury deliberates the husband's fate, Victoria finds herself embroiled in a dangerous web of fraud and intrigue that will take much more than a seance to unravel. Before it is over, she will even come to rethink her commitment to the doctrine of Free Love. Flynn Keirnan discovers the key to solving the Free Love murders lies in the provenance of the spirit photograph itself and when she does, like Victoria, her own views on love will change.