Zoe Chambers is a paramedic and deputy coroner who works hard "to find answers for the dead" in Vance Township, a tight-knit Pennsylvania farm community. In her first two books of the series, Circle of Influence and Lost Legacy, Zoe tracked the killer of a prominent town board member and investigated the suicide of a local farmer. In book three, Bridges Burned, Zoe stops a man from re-entering his burning house in an attempt to save his wife. When the raging fire proves fatal, Zoe empathizes with the homeless, unemployed widower, Holt Farabee, and his 10-year-old daughter, Maddie. She offers lodging to the pair in the dilapidated 1850s farmhouse she shares with her aging, infirm landlady. In exchange, Holt, who has handyman skills, agrees to do odd jobs.
Zoe soon forges a bond with Holt and identifies with Maddie--Zoe lost a parent, her father, when she, too, was a young girl. But when police chief Pete Adams--a man whom Zoe has kept at a romantic arm's length for years--learns of the living arrangement, he's not pleased, as his investigation is leading to suspicions about the deadly fire and Holt's past. When Pete tries to caution Zoe, she refuses to listen. Will Zoe's stubbornness lead to further peril?
Small-town dynamics color a suspenseful, well-plotted story rife with red herrings, but it's likable heroine Zoe--her vulnerabilities and deepening challenges--who makes this another winning entry in Annette Dashofy's series. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines