Book overview
December 1773
Meg Hemingway is dead, but her cryptic last words have haunted her daughter, Deborah, for eight years. You must keep them safe, Meg warned, but the danger was unnamed, and as the years passed, Deborah began to lose hope of ever understanding what she was supposed to keep her father and siblings safe from. There seems to be nothing to fear in their comfortable home in Boston. Of course, discontent is spreading through the colonies like wildfire as the unfair taxes and restrictions from Parliament reach them, but her mother couldn't have predicted that. Her father is rarely home, and when he is, he is taking the side of the vindictive family cook, Sally Ricksham, in everything. But Meg could not have predicted that either. Or could she?
A disturbing discovery makes Deborah wonder if the danger has been under her own roof the whole time. Her father and siblings seem to be thoroughly beguiled by Sally, and refuse to hear a word against her. Yet, as the evidence mounts suggesting she is hiding something, Deborah grows determined to uncover the truth before her father makes a terrible mistake. Uncovering one secret leads to another, and before long, Deborah is keeping secrets of her own as she is drawn into the rebellion: the dark before the dawn of the American Revolution.
