Family Secrets. A genealogical quest takes Van back 100 years to the Iowa prairie in search of an ancestor no one has claimed.

As Van Reinhardt clears out her father’s belongings, she comes across a request penned by her father prior to his death. Examining the family portrait of her German immigrant ancestors that he has left her, Van’s curiosity grows about one of the children portrayed there.

Meanwhile in the 1870s, Kate is a German immigrant newly arrived in America with only her brother as family. When she and her brother split, she eventually finds her way back to him, but with a secret.

Van revisits the town and the farm of her ancestors to discover calamitous events in probate records, farm auction lists, asylum records and lurid obituaries, hinting at a history far more complex and tumultuous than she had expected. But the mystery remains, until she changes upon a small book – sized for a pocket – that holds Tante Kate’s secret and provides the missing piece.

Patricia Reis' profile page

AuthorPatricia Reis is a Midwesterner at heart. In the mid-1800s, her German immigrant ancestors pioneered a farm in southwestern Iowa and their portrait gave her this story. She has lived on both coasts and currently resides in Portland, Maine where she is active in Maine Writers and Publishers. She spends six months of each year in Nova Scotia. Reis holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin, an MFA from UCLA and a degree in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. She also maintains a private practice of psychotherapy for women. Reis's memoir, Motherlines: Love, Longing, and Liberation (SheWrites Press, October 2016) won a gold medal for memoir from Independent Press Publishers. Along with numerous essays and reviews, she has published several nonfiction books.

“One chapter to the next feels like walking, step by step, into a haunted house. A great read: Once you start, it’s hard to stop. Even when you meet a ghost.” —Michael Lesy, author of Wisconsin Death Trip

“Unsettled is an old-fashioned novel, filled with characters as familiar as family pictures, as touching and as terrifying. Reis writes with assurance about the kinds of secrets that destroyed families generations ago — and maybe still do.” —Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of Deep End of the Ocean

“Unsettled is, in many respects, historical fiction at its most rich and most charming. The Reinhardts are gorgeously rendered, the prose intimate and nostalgic, their story prairie gothic at its finest. It paints a conflicted yet complete picture through interwoven points of view and Tante Kate’s journal entries, with best intentions twisted to devastating results and legacies of confusion.” —Stella K. Evans, Reviewer and Commentator

"If Unsettled is unsettling, it’s because it approaches a truth that less talented storytellers avoid: that the most honest storytelling relies on the shadows we fear.

A compelling work that explores the fragility of family history." — Kirkus Reviews