The mysteries of Hard Cider Abbey continue, as the young, Appalachian-born orchard-master Brother Emerick tries to come to terms with his own family’s tangle of lies and transgressions. He brings his sick and destitute father Bram to the monastery, after retrieving him from state prison, only to be blindsided by Bram’s dubious assertion that Emerick is not his biological son—and that he murdered the man who was. When the new monastery physician suggests that Emerick might be able to save his father’s life with the donation of a vital organ, Emerick struggles to solve this decades-old family mystery to determine if his father’s life is worth saving. Complicating this task is a subplot involving Emerick’s twin sister, Maggy, and Bram’s own difficult, ornery personality: “Of course I love him, as a monk, as a man of God,” Emerick admits to a fellow monastic, “but part of me just wants to kick him down the side of the mountain and into Skerritt Creek.” His friend, Brother Odo, who searched for his own lost parents in Name of the Father, finds his doubts about remaining in the abbey—and his love for Sister Maggy—deepening. Another novella, in the continuing series of Hard Cider Abbey mysteries.