Book Review: The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins

The Heiress fits the genre of Southern Gothic storytelling perfectly: “The stories often focus on grotesque themes. While it may include supernatural elements, it mainly focuses on damaged, even delusional, characters.” It can be challenging to care for the characters that populate Southern Gothics. They’re often cruel to others, reflecting the cruelty that was inflicted on them in their childhoods.  That’s a hallmark of a multi-generational sagas. Readers witness abhorrent behavior; they absorb far too many secrets: these are tropes that wind their way through the decades.  

Every self-respecting Southern Gothic requires an unforgettable matriarch or patriarch, and The Heiress doesn’t disappoint. Meet Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore. She ruled “the tiny town of Tavistock,” from her fabled estate in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Add up all those last names—Ruby, “North Carolina’s richest woman,” was widowed four times. Ruby is reputed to have killed her husbands—she certainly benefited from their deaths financially. When Ruby died in April 2013, newspapers harkened back to something that happened to her as child of barely three. Surrounded by her family, accompanied by her nanny, Ruby disappeared during a “picnic in the mountains surrounding the McTavish home, Ashby House.” 

At this time, the Tavistock County Sheriff’s Department says they have “no reason to suspect criminal activity” involved with the child’s disappearance, but Mr. McTavish is among the wealthiest men in the state of North Carolina, and as such, kidnapping has not been conclusively ruled out.

 

THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, MONDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 13, 1943

Ruby’s father offered a huge reward for his daughter’s return, and he also hired a private detective to keep on looking, after traditional police methods proved unsuccessful. The detective “found the child alive and well, living in Spanish Fort, Alabama, with a family by the name of Darnell, eight months after she first disappeared.” Unsurprisingly, after Ruby’s return, some folks didn’t believe it was really her. This was before the days of DNA testing. Ruby grows up—she’s a gorgeous heiress—and she marries Duke Callahan, only to lose him “to a shooting on their Paris honeymoon.” Number two, electrocuted by accident at Ashby House, “the third to a lingering illness, and the last, Roddy Kenmore, to a boating mishap.” It is any wonder that she was colloquially and very discreetly referred to as “Mrs. Kill-more?” Four marriages is all she wrote—Ruby McTavish (she took up her maiden name) became a philanthropist, “mostly involving disadvantaged youth.” Her obituary in THE ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES April 2, 2013, stated that, “It was through this work that she met and eventually adopted her only child, a young boy she named Camden, who, with her death, becomes sole heir to a fortune rumored to be in the high eight figures.”

Camden couldn’t leave Ashby House fast enough: he’s not interested in the mansion or the money or his surviving relatives. He moves to Colorado, works as an English teacher, eschewing the trappings of his privileged upbringing. Will it be possible for him to walk away from his inheritance? Camden meets and marries a young woman he meets in a bar—he and Jules live under the radar, no conspicuous consumption. 

Ten years later his uncle dies, and his cousin Ben emails. It seems that Camden’s decision to ignore his inheritance has stymied life at Ashby House. Not only is it in desperate need of repair, the reputation of the McTavish name, which “used to mean something—used to make shit happen,” is greatly tarnished. Ben wants things on the mountain fixed.

And none of that can happen until we untangle the mess Ruby left us with the damn will.

 

I’ll understand if you don’t answer this, but like I said, I had to try. I know we haven’t ever been close, and I hate that Nana Nelle and Ruby spent so much time pitting us against each other, but we’re not teenagers anymore, Cam. Come home, back to Ashby, and let’s get this shit squared away once and for all.

 

Sincerely,

Ben

Jules gently but persuasively convinces Camden to return. Everything he left behind is there waiting for him. The reader constantly questions the veracity of what they’re reading—who’s lying, who’s shading the truth, who can be believed? Strange, dangerous things start to occur at Ashby House—long buried secrets emerge. Could Camden and Jules be in danger? Always in the background, what caused Camden to leave and stay away for ten years?

Readers can take nothing or no one at face value—clear your reading schedule, hold on tight, and enjoy the twists and turns.