Synopsis:
Shadows in the Moss: A Liberty Oak Mystery
Brittan Lee Hayworth has been waiting forty years to hear from her best friend, Beth Ann Hamilton. Missing since 1963, Beth Ann Hamilton was presumed dead in the same tragic accident that killed Brittan Lee’s father and the young black civil activist, Ebon Johnson. Johnson had been accused of kidnapping the two girls and Brittan Lee’s father died trying to save them. The town mourned the loss of the mayor and Beth Ann; and blamed Brittan Lee. If she had been a better child, Brittan Lee and Beth Ann wouldn’t have been in a position to be kidnapped, and then Dr Hayworth wouldn’t have been killed. Only Ebon Johnson’s family mourned for him.
Forty years later, the body of Beth Ann is discovered at the bottom of the Liberty River. Brittan Lee returns to Liberty and lands in the middle of an FBI investigation of potential civil rights violations that summer of 1963.
FBI Agent Andrew Zeller greets Brittan Lee at the airport; he hopes to use Brittan Lee’s memories to provide the timelines, attitudes and behaviors of the local citizens during that summer. Initial reports place her everywhere about town that summer. Zeller hides his own private agenda: the disappearance of his brother, a civil rights worker who also went missing in 1963.
From the moment Brittan Lee takes in her first breath of low-country marsh air, she becomes entangled in currents of suspicion. She rejoices being with her family: Mama, the brothers, Jack and Four, her nieces and nephews so much alike they could be interchangeable, and Trulee the beloved family housekeeper. With her look-alike niece, Leigh, Brittan Lee attends the painful but necessary ‘visitation’ with Beth Ann’s still grieving mother and blatantly evil grandmother. She takes Leigh and Agent Zeller on tours of tiny Liberty, showing them the places she has held in her heart. Memories in flashbacks rush through her, painful, joyous, endearing, sometimes devastating: making hospital and patient rounds with her father, sneaking out of Children’s Choir to explore Liberty with Beth Ann, the night she followed the sounds of music to the tiny AME church and met her first black friend, Tansey. Or the times she and Beth Ann walked down to the Dairy Queen for a Dilly-Bar with Mr. Hamilton or his assistant Buddy Hudson. Her fear the day she hid in an examining room cabinet as her father’s medical partners fought over Dr Hayworth’s plans to integrate the hospital and the schools. Her sense of helplessness the afternoon she saw Ebon Johnson bloody and tired, forced in an illegal chain-gang, clearing an old field. The power of her father standing up to the deputy to right that injustice. Her anguish when she saw Ebon beaten, when she had been beaten and the pair locked in the old tabby shed under the Liberty Oak. Memories which have the potential of triggering her nightmares, of stripping away her control. Brittan Lee is big on self-control.
Someone doesn’t want Brittan Lee sharing her stories. Within hours of arriving in Liberty, someone pushes her off the pier into the Liberty River. Rescued by two local scounge-divers, they provide her with the first clue to Beth Ann’s death- a cigarette lighter found at the bridge site. A lighter engraved with a company logo, initials and a date.
Leaving the even tinier Cooshea, Georgia after the visitation, Brittan Lee and Leigh meet Warren Hamilton, still tall and handsome and now married to the former Children’s Choir Director--a woman who had actively disliked Beth Ann and Brittan Lee. As Brittan Lee and Leigh return to Liberty, a high-speed pursuit occurs- when an unknown truck chases the women through the pelting rain and lightning. Brittan Lee evades his pursuit, hiding them in a ramshackle abandoned tobacco barn.
That evening, a barrage of memories assail Brittan Lee as friends and acquaintances join her family. Introducing Zeller to her Auntabelle, her father’s office manager, Brittan Lee suggests he meet with the older woman and follow the money.
A casual comment from Leigh triggers a significant memory to Brittan Lee. With Agent Zeller, she leaves the party to sort through storage bins in her brother’s garage; while there, they share more personal intimacies until someone makes another attempt on her life- shooting at her through the storeroom window.
Warren Hamilton hired investigators to search for Beth Ann and shares the unsuccessful results. Shown the lighter with his company logo and his initials, he grieves and fears that his current wife had harmed Beth Ann. Cheryl Darton Hamilton sneers and points out that the lighter was dated two years prior to Hamilton moving to the company. Search of old company personnel records from 1950 show employee William “Buddy” Hudson; Hudson hated Hamilton for supplanting him in the business, for selling insurance to blacks and for possibly warning them of physical violence by the white supremists . The records indicate Hudson died in an alcohol-related single-car accident two days after the first anonymous phone call to the FBI in 1985.
As Hurricane Daphne encroaches on the coast, most of Liberty evacuates. Brittan Lee responds to an emergency phone call from her niece, and returns to the courthouse. She finds Leigh beaten and dumped in the tabby shed- the same shed where Brittan Lee, beaten and alone, waited out Hurricane Dora. As she hunkers down to wait out this storm, Brittan Lee is attacked again. Her late father’s partner, Dr. Bruce Wensley assaulted Leigh mistaking her for her aunt and is now determined to kill Brittan Lee, as well. He believes that Brittan Lee knew he had killed Marshall Hayworth forty years earlier. Wensley had embezzled large sums of money from the medical practice as well as from his wife’s trust funds to support his affairs with other women. Panicked that Marshall Hayworth would report him to the Medical Board, Wensley killed him and blamed the attack on the black youth, Ebon Johnson.
Brittan Lee subdues the older man; then, holding her niece, they wait out the storm.
After their rescue, Brittan Lee meets the senior FBI agent for the first time.
“Welcome home, Ebon.”
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does this synopsis interest you, the reader, into wanting to buy/read the whole book?
YES. I know plenty other folk who’d eat this book up. Very nicely done synopsis. You need to tell the ending, too.
Some places I became confused between flash backs. I couldn’t tell when was what. I know in general the kidnapping of Britt and Beth.
The power of her father standing up to… Though this is a great phrase, it’s confusing…need rewording as a full sentence to match preceding and following sentences.
This is a well-worked out story. I like the mystery behind this and the false accusation, which has happened so many times. The racial tension makes this book a must read.
Introducing Zeller to her Auntabelle, her father’s [Did you mean this to say “her” Auntabelle?]
Ok, I read and re-read: so Ebon isn’t dead? And is, in fact, a senior member of the FBI? I’m sure this would make more sense with the entire MS, but it is unclear from your summary. I think you intended to show plot twist and instead created confusion. Also, this ends fairly abruptly. Is there more? Maybe that’s where I am getting confused.
The big and small of it, no, I wouldn’t be interested as a reader, but it’s not for a lack of style or creativity on your part. I think there are many well thought out correlations and twists in your story, I am just not a “civil rights” reader. It would likely appeal to someone that is. There are a lot of characters mentioned here and the similar names does get confusing, but your explanation makes sense—family names and all of that. I’d recommend maybe capitalizing the first instance of each character’s name in the synopsis [EBON] so that the editor/publisher, whomever, can easily cross-reference them. I wish you the best of luck! A solid “9” across the board from me.
It’s interesting, but it doesn’t particularly stand out. I think there could be great depth and subtlety that just doesn’t show the synopsis – though that’s probably because it’s a synopsis. The plot is strong, but there’s no truly devious twists. The characters are nice but none really caught my eye. If this was a description of a novel I really wouldn’t look at it twice – it would just blend in. But I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, because it’s hard to stand out with a summary.
Be careful with your names. I can see really famous names instead and this distracts me from the read because straightaway I’m aware of reading the work of an amateur.
eg Brittan Lee Hayworth. RITA HAYWORTH
Ebon Johnson ELTON JOHN
Brittan Lee BRENDA LEE
you can easily change names with today’s word processors. Try taking your names from a phone book or a newspaper. Or Google.
To do a synopsis of a book you might try:
Write 1 sentence only. No names. eg. A young black activist returns from the dead.
Expand that sentence.
after 40 years and is able to clear the name of the prime suspect for his own murder.
Expand it a bit more.
because Hurricane Dora triggers long forgotten memories of the (say exact year)Hurricane Daphne.
etc.
Then put the story into a single paragraph and expand that. and so on.
there is a flaw here. Hurricanes are named alphabetically. eg. When you get to Hurricane Zeta the next Hurricane would be have to start with an A eg Hurricane Abbeé two Ds are unlikely to occur over 40 years. It would be more believable if you started one of the Hurricane’s names with a different letter.
I wouldn’t go into trivial complications like people’s names getting mixed up. The synopsis is the action. Many names within few lines put any reader into a hopeless muddle.
The first part of a synopsis does not have to include detail. Neither does it have to build up suspense. It’s job is to simply condense the story.
flaw: after 40 years there would be no body. fish pick the bones. the bones disperse in the currents.
contradiction: Ebon is killed in the 1st paragraph. No ifs or buts.
so he cannot appear at the end.
Perhaps you have written ambiguously in the 1st paragraph and didn’t mean to say that Ebon was definitely dead.
town mourned loss of mayor. Who was the mayor?
Hope I’ve helped.
I found the synposis a little confusing with all the characters. However, the story sounds like it would have a lot of action in it. Readers like action. I would actually have to read the story first in order to judge it properly. Your subject of civil rights perked my interest. It sounds like something worth exploring. I would like to know why anyone would blame a little girl for a kidnapping. You didn’t elaborate on exactly what she did that made her responsibe.
Brittan Lee’s memories to provide the timelines, attitudes and behaviors of the local citizens during that summer. Initial reports place her everywhere about town that summer.
The above seems very general. Again i would have to know how old the child was. How much would she even know or remember? Also what child pays attention to the behaviors and attitudes of the local citizens. You will have to be careful when writing about her memory. It sounds like she has amnesia because she still expects to hear from her friend who then turns up dead.
Again, i would have to read the story.Overall, It does sound very interesting and i would love to see how you handle such a large cast of characters and the sophisticated, yet violatle subject of the Racial equality in the 60’s. Good luck SANDI
“I suppose my question would be—does this synopsis interest you, the reader, into wanting to buy/read the whole book?”
This is the question I will answer since a normal critique doesn’t really work well with a synopsis. Additionally, I have little to no knowledge of how a synopsis is supposed to be structured.
I can say that I adore a good mystery. I think your ideas and storyline sound like they have the potential to be quite interesting. It appears as though you may have some good twists. I can’t say for certain if I would buy/read the whole book simply because I would need to open it and see how it was being executed first. I can tell you it does pique my interest. If it was in a book store I would probably pop it open thumb through a coupe of pages and base my decision on that.
As a side note: Brittan Lee Hayworth has been waiting forty years to hear from her best friend, Beth Ann Hamilton. – I thought that was a great opening line for your synopsis. It drew me in. I hope it will do the same for the publishers your agent sends it to.
Good luck to you. Congratulations on finishing your novel and acquiring an agent.
Wow. I just reviewed a piece with your same character “Brittan Lee Hayworth” it’s kind of weird reading that piece first and then the entire story summed up. (which was done quite nicely) I think looking back I now like the part I read, even better.
:-)
Names should be in all caps the first time they appear. Use as few names as you can. In spite of what I learned years ago, now they only want single spaces between sentences, at least in material you’re submitting. Figure on several days to change that :( Reading between the lines, it appears the father was the mayor, but that’s not clear. You need to check the difference between blatent and blatant. You may well have used the wrong one,although both are words. Don’t use contractions in this, unless it’s in a direct quote, which you should avoid anyway. Rejoices IN being with her family..She is entangled, not becomes entangled. Mama; the brothers, Jack and Four; etc. Disappeared would be better than “went missing.” That’s too slangy. Or the times is not the best way to start out a sentence. That, actually, is not a sentence. Neither are the next four. They should be.Rescued by two local scounge-divers, they provide This should be “The two local scounge (huh? scrounge? sponge?) who rescue her provide her…. You need dashes, not hyphens in places like after death…. A lighter engraved with a company logo, initials and a date.This, again, is not a sentence. Pelting rain, not the pelting rain…
After Georgia, you need a comma, but there is no reason to mention the place. Simply say, After the visitation…
hiding them in a ramshackle abandoned tobacco barn. Who is them? She and her niece hide in….. need a comma after ramshackle, but better yet, leave out the word. You don’t want a lot of adjectives in a synopsis.
friends and acquaintances join her family This sounds like they become a part of her family, probably not what you mean.
his current wife Either his wife or his present wife if he has had more than one. Niece, and… drop the comma. If a tabby shed is a tobacco shed, you should simply say this. The synopsis is not the place to introduce local slang. If she was dumped there before, when and why and is this necessary to the synopsis?
HAS THE GROUND BEEN SENT AND HAVE CLUES BEEN PLANTED TO MAKE THE REAL CULPRIT A POSSIBILITY? If not, it’s unfair to the reader to introduce somebody new at the end of the book and make him the killer.
This has to be letter perfect and so does your manuscript. If this has this many errors and more I probably have missed, it makes me think your manuscript will also need an substantial amount of revision before it is submitted to an agent or editor.
i think your synopsis is very interesting and it does make me wanna read the rest of the book. i think you should get some pretty good feedback from the publishers that your agent sends this too. good luck.
I always read the synopsis on a book and if it does not grab me and leave me wondering then I do not by it. I feel in this maybe you give a little too much away. Maybe ending it with a question is a good idea as well. Hope this helps.
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