Sea-Born Women - by B J Mountford (Paperback)

About the Book

"Bert" Lenehan arrives on Portsmouth Island as a National Park Service volunteer and stumbles on mysterious deaths.

Book Synopsis

"Bert" Lenehan arrives on Portsmouth Island as a National Park Service volunteer and stumbles on mysterious deaths.

Review Quotes

After restless Roberta (aka Bert) Lenehan comes to Portsmouth Island, N.C., to volunteer for the National Parks Service, she finds the body of a woman in the island's marsh; a previous park caretaker had met a different mysterious end. In B.J. Mountford's Sea-born Women, Bert tries to uncover the truth does the island hide a deadly treasure-hunter? Is a long-dead pirate guarding his grave? How does the legend of the Sea-born Woman relate to the crimes? as bad weather threatens and romance with a younger man blossoms. -Publishers Weekly

Roberta "Bert" Lenehan expects peace and quiet when she accepts a job as caretaker on the remote, picturesque island village of Portsmouth, North Carolina. Bruised by a recent breakup, Bert plans to open a restaurant after a stint of solitude, but solitude never comes. Nosy locals like womanizing Jimmy Range and earth mother Lettie Jones disturb her by day and ghostly sounds unsettle her by night. One welcome disturbance is rugged forest ranger Hunter O'Hagan, with whom Bert flirts outrageously. He tells her the legend of his ancestor, the 18th-century "sea-born woman" Jerushia, whose spirit supposedly haunts the island (and whose chapters counterpoint those in the present following Bert). Bert listens attentively because of her recent experience with creepy night noises, because she herself is a sea-born woman (born aboard her father's boat), and because she's falling in love with Hunter, despite feeling that he's too young for her. The line between legend and reality becomes dangerously blurred when the corpse of a meddlesome local woman named Luna Mae is found in an island marsh, with murder suspected, and Bert learns that Luna Mae was not the first Portsmouth corpse in recent memory. A previous caretaker died under mysterious circumstances, a fact conveniently concealed from Bert before she took the job. Does the legend of Jerushia connect the island's modern-day mysteries?
Plot coherence in Mountford's debut gets swamped by descriptions of exotic settings and homely everyday activities. Romantic suspense 1, whodunit 0. -Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

BJ Mountford comes from a merchant-marine family. She was born in San Francisco but was brought up on the coast of Chile, Venezuela, and Barbados. She attended college in Pennsylvania, where she met her husband at a nearby law school. After a 25-year career in real estate, BJ sold her office and tried her hand at writing. When she retired to Emerald Isle, North Carolina, she began volunteering with the National Park Service. She's worked at Portsmouth Island and Cape Lookout Keepers' Quarters on the Outer Banks. She's also volunteered at parks in Hawaii, Idaho, and Georgia.