The Distant Hours

Author: Kate Morton
Published: 2010
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3.5

Summary
A long lost letter arrives in the post...and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle. Milderhurst is a great but moldering old house where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13-year-old child during WWII. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn’t been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941.

Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in ‘the distant hours’ of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.
Review
The reader knows by about 80 pages in "what" happened...but doesn't know the "who," "how," or "why" until the very end. The characters were unusual and the plots twists carefully intertwined. The background plot of the Mud Man story was Gothically-creepy and compelling. A read that was worthwhile but not necessarily memorable.