The Bell Tolls at Traeger Hall is a riveting, spine-tingling addition to author Jaime Jo Wright’s collection of split-time mystery novels, including The Premonition at Withers Farm, Specters in the Glass House, and more. Blending legend, history, scriptural truth, romance, complex plotting, and multifaceted characterization, Wright invites readers into a world where things are not what they seem, where the struggle between good and evil forces is at times tangible, and where God is at work fulfilling his redemptive purposes when all evidence seems to point to the contrary.
In 1890, orphaned Waverly Pembrooke lives with eccentric Leopold Traeger and his second wife, Waverly’s aunt, Cornelia, in Traeger Hall, by the small town of Newton Creek, Wisc. The young woman knows that Uncle Leopold commissioned a bell tower attached to his home to be erected because he was convinced someone would murder him. He has instructed his household staff to ring the bell when disaster strikes so the townspeople will come to his aid.
Waverly isn’t inside Traeger Hall when the bell finally tolls, though she hears it, as do the townspeople. When they run to offer their assistance, they discover a horrifying and inexplicable scene—Leopold and Cornelia have been brutally murdered. Soon, Waverly is considered a suspect, and she is forced to navigate what seem to be impossible choices. If she reveals where she was the night the bell tolled, she will endanger someone she deeply cares about. If she lies about her whereabouts, she knows she’ll eventually be found out. What can she do? And who can help her?
In the present day, 30-year-old Jennie Phillips has come to Newton Creek to look at Traeger Hall, which she inherited from her mom, who died a few months ago. Still mourning her loss and dealing with the legacy of her abusive father, Jennie feels unmoored and alone. She has no idea how she’ll ever access the hall because it’s completely bricked up and has been for more than a century, a stipulation Leopold Traeger had included in his unconventional, bizarre will. To make matters worse, on Jennie’s first day in the town, a young boy, seemingly mute, leads her to a gruesome discovery—skeletal remains mired in a creek.
As Jennie finds her way in the town haunted by eerie legends, unsolved murders, and simmering suspicions, she discovers that learning to trust again is a possibility for her and that love can be found where least expected.
Exhilaratingly suspenseful, this novel keeps readers guessing about whodunnit and why until the very end. (Bethany House Publishers)