An Ostentation

This is a story about the Peacock family, a family as old as Chicago. Born in 1837, the city and family grew side by side, undergoing tremendous physical and cultural changes. The family's patriarch, Elijah Peacock, arrived at the tip of Lake Michigan the same year that the city was incorporated, a third-generation jeweler and watch repairman emigrating from England. Building a business in a new land, fathering seven children by two wives in the process, the next four generations of his family, locally renowned for its elegant jewelry store, CD Peacock's, provides the basis for Pamelia Barratt's latest historical mystery novel. The mid-twentieth century finds the family coping with the downturn of their business following WWII. Feathers are ruffled when Bernard Peacock is determined to marry Safi, a Jewish girl from Maxwell Street.

Mysteries and secrets are embedded within the family tree and concealed by the pride of consecutive generations. Tensions created by the divisions of class and ethnicity set the stage for a compelling love story during the transformative years of a great city, woven into a murder mystery intimately entwined with Chicago's development.