When a person receives a heart transplant, does that recipient take on some of the memories, characteristics and attitudes of the original owner? That's the scenario posited here by Debra Ginsberg (The Neighbors Are Watching).
Eden Harrison needs a heart transplant. Her fiancé, Derek, cares for her while she is waiting for a heart to be found and when she recuperates after surgery. Then life becomes complicated: Eden has terrible nightmares about a mountain road in a deluge, pulls away from Derek's attentions and, finally, breaks the engagement. She has always loved the misty skies of Portland, Ore.--but now she's inexorably drawn to the sunny climes of San Diego.
She takes a job in a restaurant that seems somehow familiar to her, where she meets a frequent customer named Darcy. Darcy is a gorgeous, wealthy young widow but she is also friendless and alone, still brooding over the fact that she allowed her husband to abuse her. She zeroes in on Eden and invites her to live with her. The suspense is heightened on every page as these two play a push-me/pull-you game: How much they can trust one another? How much can either tell the other? Most importantly, what does Darcy want from Eden?
Questions multiply: What happened to Darcy's husband? Whose heart does Eden have? The reader is kept guessing--until Ginsberg's carefully crafted ending. Psychologically taut, alternately menacing and benign, What the Heart Remembers is an entirely believable story of one possessed--but by whom or what? --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.