Elaine Benson, a successful novelist who let love in the person of an unreliable screenwriter jettison her career, is now divorced, broke, and come to a "primitive, untamed northern forest" on Lake Muskoka to interview for a job. Elderly Miss Moira Madison of the fabulously rich Canadian family wishes to write her memoirs. <BR>Miss Madison isn't interested in a bestseller. She wants to leave a record of her life and most specifically of her years with the Canadian Army Nursing Sisters of World War II. Her service in the British and then European theater was filled with triumphs and bitter losses and forever shaped her life. Can Elaine tell her story working with decades of old documents? Settling into the family "cottage" and what remains of a lifestyle long gone, Elaine reconnects with her love of researching the past. But somehow her project--she soon discovers the first writer hired oddly drowned in the Lake--stirs someone to murder. . . .

Delany's fine second mystery (after 2005¹s Scare the Light Away) offers a breath of fresh air from north of the border. Soon after Elaine Benson agrees to assist Miss Moira Madison, who served with the Canadian Army Nursing Sisters during WWII, with her memoirs, Elaine learns that the first writer Moira hired drowned in the lake by Moira¹s summer ³cottage² after less than a week on the job. Later, as members of the privileged Madison clan gather at the cottage in Ontario¹s Muskoka region for Thanksgiving, tensions mount, culminating in a fire. Elaine suspects that someone will go to great lengths to prevent Moira from revealing certain family secrets.The alternating rhythm of chapters of contemporary narrative and shorter sections of Moira¹s recollections of life as an army nurse helps build suspense. The striking setting, the picture of the Canadian social elite and several deftly handled subplots make for a richly textured and highly satisfying read. — Publishers Weekly (4.24.2006)

Praise for Scare the Light Away

"Not so much reveling in family secrets as insisting that families can overcome them, debut novelist Delany is adept at ratcheting up the emotional tension. . . ."

--Kirkus Reviews

"After a messy divorce, Elaine Benson thinks that taking a job helping wealthy Canadian matriarch Moira Madison write her memoirs might be just the thing to get her nonfiction writing career back on track. Unfortunately, she didn't bargain for Moira's contentious extended family & & three generations of relatives full of opinions and resentments about Moira's project and about one another. The contemporary family story, viewed through Elaine's outsider perspective, alternates with Moira's disjointed recollections of years as a nurse in Europe during World War II, where she meets the love of her life and learns a secret about her beloved brother that she guards long after his death. Although Moira and her household are distinctive, it's difficult to keep some of the numerous other supporting characters straight, and hints of mystery and the supernatural (Is there a ghost, or isn't there?) never expand into real suspense. Even so, readers who favor leisurely puzzles steeped in family dynamics and flavored with descriptions of beautiful scenery may find this just what they're looking for."--Booklist

Vicki Delany lives in Oakville, Ontario, where she is employed as a systems analyst, but her first love is the Canadian wilderness where her novels are set. She is a member of Crime Writers of Canada and is the editor of the Sisters in Crime, Toronto Chapter, newsletter. Burden of Memory is her second novel, following Scare the Light Away.