Not knowing a lot about their family history and certainly nothing of their stage-star grandmother, the girls rush to the nursing home to ask her about her past. Upon arriving there, they find their grandmother dead of apparent natural causes. What does strike Molly as odd is that the girls are told a young man with reddish brown hair and a mustache had just been to see her grandmother. Molly knows of no other relatives or friends that would visit and is concerned. Her concern grows when she spots a man with the same description driving slowly past her shop several times.

The two young women decide they are going to trace their roots and see if they have any family left. Instead of starting at their local library or historical society, or even the Internet, Molly and Nell take off for New York City to try and find out what they can about their grandmother’s past. While they are there, there is an explosion at their shop that kills Molly’s friends that were minding it. Molly immediately expects that she and Nell were the targets, and becomes more convinced that someone killed her grandmother.

With nothing left in North Carolina and a hefty insurance check, Molly and Nell settle their affairs and head off to England in search of their grandfather. After that, armed with a few more tidbits of information, the girls head to their final destination, Gale Island, their family’s homestead, where they are met by death and the promise of more.

The Girl at the End of the Line is an eerie novel about family relationships and greed. Molly and Nell both have childlike qualities that may endure them to some readers, but may make others wonder how they manage in life. Sometimes Molly’s speech seems too grown-up for her and out of character, and even though she insists to everyone else that mentally there is nothing wrong with Nell, many times she herself is too controlling of Nell and acts as if she has a handicap other than her loss of speech.

The girls’ trips are fanciful and have an almost surreal quality to them. At times, their adventures and quest to find their family are more intriguing than their search for their mother’s killer and their grandmother’s killer. The Girl at the End of the Line is an unusual mystery filled with all kinds of creepy relatives with an upbeat rags-to-riches ending.

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry