The Fearless Moral Inventory of Elsie Finch

There's a filigree setting for every family secret.

Richard and Gail Finch designed their estate to carry consequences for misplaced loyalties over a lifetime, but there were consequences neither one bargained for. When the third generation aims for a cache of treasure, someone is expendable.

What Elsie covets is the truth. Risking it all, she unfolds her parents' legacy to reveal the spoiling and calculated detachments. Then her father dies leaving her sister alone in a dilapidated house with recorded notebooks to decipher.

Untying the family Finch saga with Mother's blistering tales, Elsie's own timeline helps them unravel layers of animosity and motives for the punishments that created full-blown personality disorders. Richardson and Gail's unscrupulous affections span the geography of San Francisco Bay, Phoenix Arizona, Oklahoma City, and finally slip into the shadow of the Rockies. Will someone pay for the past? Who wins in this long game, and what remains?

A certain poetry transforms Elsie's stages of grief when redemption is offered only to the very brave.

THE FEARLESS MORAL INVENTORY OF ELSIE FINCH - recreates a three-generational narrative of an American family blending intimacy and loyalty for a parent who, failing in marital intimacy, lives vicariously through a favored child.

Praise for Elsie Finch

"...brave and startlingly candid; Elsie Finch is lodged in my heart of hearts...Her character manages to explore the darker side of human foibles-while at the same time weaving in a bright thread of hope." - Kathy Joy, Author, Editor 

"ELSIE FINCH helps us remember that every family member has a unique point of view. I relate to each of them and believe in what turned them as they are, one way or the other."  - Sandy Fisher, Writing Coach S.A. 

"Puns for chapter headings is a first for me. The puzzle at each new segment, such as "Small Matters," called me into a moral inventory of my own "small matters". California dreams turn to nightmares in ELSIE FINCH, but at the end of her story, my husband and I reviewed, amended, and signed our own personal bequests."      - L.B.W.