Good day, book people. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. For those of you that celebrated Mother’s Day, I hope you had a wonderful celebration with family and friends. I spent the day with my 86-y.o. mother, my 82-y.o. paternal aunt, my niece, a cousin, and my soon-to-be sister-in-love. We dined at an historic inn here in West Virginia and enjoyed the afternoon in a scenic setting with wonderful food and great company. Needless to say, I didn’t get to spend a lot of time reading yesterday, although I did spend some time discussing some great recent reads. If you’re like me, you’re always on the lookout for a good book to read and it doesn’t really matter how many books are already on your TBR list. As I sat in the historic Glen Ferris Inn yesterday (one of the oldest inns in West Virginia), I thought about how it would be the perfect setting for a book, perhaps a historical mystery or even a Southern Gothic novel. Setting plays such a large part of a story, that we don’t notice it much if it’s done right. Today, I’m pleased to welcome Melissa Colasanti, author of Call Me Elizabeth Lark, a domestic suspense tale set in the Pacific Northwest and featuring a bed and breakfast. Please help me welcome Ms. Colasanti to the blog. I hope you’ll enjoy what she has to say about setting, add Call Me Elizabeth Lark to your TBR list, and follow the blog tour to learn more about this book and author. Thank you, Ms. Colasanti for taking the time to join us today. The blog is now yours.
The Importance of Setting
by Melisa Colasanti
Thank you so much for having me! When I began Call Me Elizabeth Lark, I knew that setting would be an integral part of the story. I didn’t realize just how emotionally connected the brooding Pacific Northwest would be to my characters. I’ve never been an urban, gritty suspense writer. Domestic suspense affords an author to take a close, psychological look at family, while hopefully providing a twisty plot. It’s an interesting genre—part family drama, part thriller—in which the environment where the author places their characters reveals so much about them.
In the novel, Myra and Herb Barkley own a bed and breakfast on the Oregon coast. Twenty years prior, they lost their youngest daughter, who disappeared from the beach, never to be seen again. Since that day, she’s waited at the gray, drizzly inn for her daughter to return. The inn itself is suffocating, claustrophobic, and the characters within it are similarly stuck within their emotions, trapped in a different time. All of this changes when Elizabeth Lark, who has been trapped in an isolated, dilapidated cabin in the woods, walks in the door, where Myra determines that she is Charlotte, her missing child. And of course, Elizabeth has brought all her troubles with her. Gwen, who was supposed to be babysitting the night her sister went missing, has been wracked with guilt all along. If Charlotte has returned, all of her guilt will be assuaged.
As I wrote (and rewrote, and revised, and edited!) I realized that Myra would never leave the small town, Rocky Shores, because it’s her home, and it is her daughter Charlotte’s home. Even if Charlotte didn’t return, this inn is where she married and raised her family. And Elizabeth is similarly drawn to the warm inn because she’s just come from the deeply isolated forest. Sometimes, authors use a sense of place as a character of its own, which is definitely true of my novels. I believe that we build our identities around family, and around that place on the lithosphere where we originate from. Each part of a human blossoms from where the first seed was planted. And when danger strikes, there’s no place like home, no matter how dysfunctional or complicated it is.
Call Me Elizabeth Lark
by Melissa Colasanti
May 1-31, 2021 Tour
Synopsis:
Your daughter went missing twenty years ago. Now, she’s finally back. You thought she had returned a few times in the past, and your husband tells you she’s not the one, but you feel it in your bones.
Now, what will you do to keep her home?
Twenty years ago, Myra Barkley’s daughter disappeared from the rocky beach across from the family inn, off the Oregon coast. Ever since, Myra has waited at the front desk for her child to come home. One rainy afternoon, the miracle happens–her missing daughter, now twenty-eight years old with a child of her own, walks in the door.
Elizabeth Lark is on the run with her son. She’s just killed her abusive husband and needs a place to hide. Against her better judgment, she heads to her hometown and stops at the Barkley Inn. When the innkeeper insists that Elizabeth is her long lost daughter, the opportunity for a new life, and more importantly, the safety of her child, is too much for Elizabeth to pass up. But she knows that she isn’t the Barkley’s daughter, and the more deeply intertwined she becomes with the family, the harder it becomes to confess the truth.
Except the Barkley girl didn’t just disappear on her own. As the news spreads across the small town that the Barkley girl has returned, Elizabeth suddenly comes into the limelight in a dangerous way, and the culprit behind the disappearance those twenty years ago is back to finish the job.
Book Details:
Genre: Domestic Suspense
Published by: Crooked Lane Books
Publication Date: March 9th 2021
Number of Pages:
ISBN: 1643856820 (ISBN13: 9781643856827)
Series: Call Me Elizabeth Lark is not a part of a series.
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
Author Bio:
Melissa Colasanti is a mother and an author. She has a BFA in fiction from Boise State University. Her writing has appeared in Lithub, Memoir Magazine, The Coffin Bell Journal and others. She is the Stephen R. Kustra scholar in creative writing for 2019, and was awarded the Glenn Balch Award for fiction in 2020.
Catch Up With Melissa Colasanti:
MelissamColasanti.com
Goodreads
BookBub – @melissamcolasanti
Instagram – @melissacolasanti
Twitter – @mmcolasanti
Facebook – @melissacolasantiauthor
Tour Participants:
Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!
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Giveaway:
This is a Rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Melissa Colasanti. There will be one (1) winner of one (1) signed Copy of Call Me Elizabeth Lark + Swag (US Addresses ONLY). The giveaway begins on May 1, 2021 and runs through June 1, 2021. Void where prohibited.
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The Book Diva's Reads 
Excellent guest post, thank you! This book is on my wish list. To be honest, this guest post makes me want to read it even more!
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