Publisher's Synopsis
Anna and Ralph Jackson have an enviable, idyllic retired life on Nantucket. Their summers are spent at 'Sconset Beach, nibbling sandwiches from Claudette's while watching for seals in the cold Atlantic, reading stacks of books from Mitchell's Book Corner on snowy winter nights, and helping their son Cal at his popular home-furnishings and design store, Nantucket Nest. For nearly twenty years, they have lived on Wampanoag Way in a large two-story gray-shingled historic home, circled about with purple hydrangeas and set behind a manicured emerald hedge. Long-ago transplants from Dallas, they are happy and content, living off their vast Texas oil income. Anna, forever trying to shed her long-ago Kansas farm-girl identity, has pulled every vestige of the island over her head, like one of the many cashmere sweaters hanging by color in her walk-in closet. Life is close to perfect for the Jackson threesome.
But Ralph becomes ill, quickly entering hospice and dying within months. Anna's life crumbles at the reading of her husband's will. "Your estranged step-daughter is coming for a cash grab," her attorney warns. "And what she wants is all of the Texas land and mineral interests your husband sold in 2019. It appears that those minerals never belonged to Ralph-they were Elisa's and Cal's inheritance!"
A domino-fall of shattering surprises reveals secrets and lies within the extended Jackson family, corruption within the largest oil producer in Texas, a greedy oil broker who has illegally sold Ralph's assets to a serial recidivist, a group of indifferent lawyers, and an inveigled jury, whose verdict forever impacts the value of family trusts across the country, putting illegal buying and selling of oil interests into the hands of powerful criminals. As Anna and Cal try to come to grips with their financial ruin, with a jury trial ahead of them, a final surprise is tucked into Ralph's will: he has deeded the Wampanoag Way house to a woman from his past.
Full of unforgettable characters, The Widow on Wampanoag Way is a story of an indomitable family and group of friends who question the goodness of life as they wrestle with trials common to all men: broken families, self-protection, greed, compromise for self-aggrandizement, an addiction to mediocrity, clash of worldviews, and the final sting of death. It is also a story of the only choice that leads to healing and hope.
