Under the Tree Fern: A Novel

Perfect for fans of State of Wonder, this lushly written debut novel offers up one dead body, two amateur sleuths separated by decades, a vividly depicted Caribbean setting, and years of long-buried family secrets.
In 1942 Puerto Rico, the death of a middle-aged American woman in the heart of El Yunque Rainforest arouses little attention from anyone—except for the sixteen-year-old boy who finds her. Bright and introverted, Eduardo Colón initially shrinks from the publicity stirred up by his find. He has enough problems with his adoptive parents urging him to leave his sheltered life in Puerto Rico and study in the States. But when he learns the dead woman, Laura Morrison, was once his mother's schoolmate, curiosity overcomes qualms and he searches island-wide for answers. What he discovers draws him into dangerous wartime intrigues and a tangle of disturbing personal connections.

Decades later, Pamela Palmer sits on a balcony...