I’ve been using Goodreads for a few years now, and I often get really good recommendations from that site.  I was browsing and came across the below description for Kate Morton’s “The Distant Hours.”

A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, 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.

Morton once again enthralls readers with an atmospheric story featuring unforgettable characters beset by love and circumstance and haunted by memory, that reminds us of the rich power of storytelling.  

A jilted fiancee?  A castle with secrets?  Obviously, I was hooked.  I have a weakness for anything that sounds remotely like Jane Eyre/Great Expectations.  And I definitely wasn’t disappointed.  I certainly got a Havisham vibe from Juniper Blythe.  Anyone who has ever seen the Ethan Hawke/Gwyneth Paltrow movie version of Great Expectations automatically pictures the incredible Anne Bancroft when thinking of Ms. Havisham.  Don’t judge me for loving this movie.  It’s a 90’s classic.

I loved the atmosphere of the book, and I could just about picture old Milderhurst Castle coming through the fog.  A big part of this novel were multiple references to a book that was written by the father of the Blythe sisters.  His book involved a kind of nightmarish monster called “The Mud Man.”  I don’t want to give anything away, but The Mud Man takes a prominent place in the book and provides the author with a mechanism to reach into the past.  All in all, I found this to be an enjoyable read.  It delves into the complicated relationship between a mother and daughter as well as into the relationships between sisters.

I thought a fitting tribute to The Mud Man would be a mudslide (or the Mud Man Cocktail, which seems more in line with the book).  I’ve also only recently discovered how much I love Bailey’s.  I used to think that it was cloyingly sweet and didn’t find it to be very appetizing.  I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.

http://liquor.com/recipes/mudslide/