The Masked Man and the Orphan Girl

"The Masked Man and the Orphan Girl" is a suspenseful murder story set in a small Mississippi town in the 1980's. Cranberry Farmer, a teenage girl who has lost her parents, flees from her adopted home. Her ordeal, survival instincts, and new life frame the central perspective of the story. Off-setting her world is the "masked man," who is a killer with a bizarre ritualistic pattern. The reader is kept guessing about who he is, and why he behaves as he does. The county police, particularly the enigmatic sheriff, are thoroughly involved. There are a number of strands, seemingly unrelated, which gradually weave together until a rather surprising ending. As the novel begins, Cranberry Farmer has just endured the ordeal of her young life. Named by her free-spirited, but deceased parents, now she flees from her adopted relatives. She is seen lugging her suitcase down the road to meet an uncertain fate. Cheerwood Mississippi, a very fine town, is her home. But it is also the source of incipient evil, emerging as a man dressed in white. Madam Torrance, his first victim (or is she?), reveals to him the last fortune she will ever give: a girl in the water. The police struggle to find the ritualistic killer. The white man stalks the next victim to be sacrificed. And the orphan girl intensely dreams of water.