On a stifling August night in 1906, Karl Bauer fired two shots at his second wife. His sixteen-year old daughter, Minna struggled to wrest the revolver from his hands and the shots went wild. Her father, believing that he had murdered, turned the gun on himself. The intended victim, the wicked step-mother, survived. He died. This true event serves as the fulcrum for the story. At ninety, Minna reveals this shameful secret to her own daughter, laying bare the mysterious pent-up anger between them. The story traces the lives of three generations marked by the impact of this violent act. Set in a quiet village in New York's Mohawk valley during the burgeoning late 19th century, the personal dramas are played out against a backdrop of the rich political and historic events of the time; the rise of the labor movement and struggle for women's rights. As a child, the author romanticized her mother's early life; imagining her orphaned, left in the care of a wicked stepmother. However, when her mother, aged ninety, revealed the entire shocking truth, the author's powerful imaginings surrounding these events became first a journal, then a memoir and eventually expanded into this novel. Ms. Chayes holds a bachelor of music degree, a degree in Interior and Environmental Design from UCLA and was writer and executive producer of a critically acclaimed documentary film about her renowned teacher of piano, Karl Ulrich Schnabel. After raising a large family and following several careers in the arts, she now writes each day. She is eighty-two years old and lives with her husband in Los Angeles.