Journal of Eva Morelli

On the cover is a portending reproduction of Van Gogh's painting, UNDERGROWTH WITH TWO FIGURES, a depiction of two subjects who are "faceless and inscrutable in a pathless wilderness," says another reader. This intriguing cover provokes questions: Who are they? Or more accurately, given the title: Who is this mystery woman? Both women and men alike will eagerly brace themselves in anticipation of the approaching psychological horror.

The three characters at the center of the novel revolve unknowingly around one another as if wandering in the dark. As each character plays a crucial role in this thriller, the suspense only grows. And although Van Gogh's painting reveals two figures, it perhaps suggests a third, the unknown subject lurking in the undergrowth. Sensitive, yet dispassionate, Stephen Forester, a psychiatrist, has been practicing for ten years in this tranquil seaside community in New Hampshire. But once the elusive Eva steps into his office and begins to reveal the story of her own tragic past, his convictions start to crumble, as over the course of the sweltering summer he is more and more haunted by obscure memories of his childhood. He wonders if the mystery evolving in his current life has to do with his past or present existence. He is preoccupied with fleeting yet pressing images—but again, is it from his past or the present? Who is the woman in the brown dress? The mystery woman? Now Brea, his wife, an actress, and Eva, his patient, two women, are creating a sense of dissonance within Stephen. Vivacious and passionate, Brea suddenly has a hankering to go back to New York from whence she, Stephen, and their twelve year old son came ten years before. Why is she no longer as direct and as approachable as Stephen once found her to be? As Eva Morelli Stein Hathaway, tall, with blue-gray eyes, dark-hair, hauntingly beautiful, writes in her first journal: "And though I told the truth, I was essentially fiction," author Maryann D'Agincourt cracks open the door into the psychological horror that propels Eva to seek out Dr. Forester.