Now live on Amazon!
“Blood on Holy Ground is an exciting contrast between belief systems, peoples, and forces of both good and evil, making for an engrossing story that’s hard to put down.”
Midwest Book Review, Diane Donovan, Editor and Senior Reviewer
“BLOOD ON HOLY GROUND is a beautifully-written mystery novel that combines a gripping and suspenseful story with thought-provoking and heartfelt spirituality.”
IndieReader: 4 stars
“C.L. Francisco is a modern writer in the tradition of Christian apologists like C.S. Lewis. Her ecumenical view of spiritual experience permeates this magical novel, expressing a love of the natural world and a reverence for religious folklore and fable.”
Self Publishing Review 4 ½ stars
In February of 2018, only a few months before its intended release, I decided to withdraw Blood on Holy Ground from publication. Here is the statement I posted at that time:
It’s a sad thing to decide that a book you’ve created doesn’t need to be born into the world. Perhaps if I’d listened to that small voice that speaks just below the threshold of ordinary hearing, I could’ve saved myself a lot of time, pain, and expense. But I didn’t, so now—at this late date—I find myself announcing that my upcoming mystery, Blood on Holy Ground, will not be released this fall. Perhaps it will be reborn some day in a vastly altered form. Who knows? I won’t go into details as to why I’m withdrawing it. I’ll just say that my reasons lie somewhere in a hazy area between ethics and spirituality. The possibility of future Miranda Lamden mysteries is also on hold for now. I’ll need some distance before making that call.
The manuscript as it stands today is indeed “vastly altered,” although it is essentially unchanged in major plot lines and voice. A question of evil lay at the heart of my withdrawing the book. I’ve had the misfortune to encounter evil in a variety of intensely nasty forms in my life, and such experiences leave their scars. My concern was, and is, that this remembered darkness had seeped into Holy Ground. By its nature, evil can whisper into vulnerable ears with seductive appeal . . . and I wanted no part in spreading it. Yet, as I said when I decided to put my own name on the Miranda Lamden series, the presence of evil in the world cannot and should not be ignored, in fiction or anywhere else. I hope I’ve succeeded in drawing any lingering toxicity from Holy Ground without minimizing its reality. Maybe the danger was never anywhere but in my own mind. In any case, I believe the book deserves to be published.
Formatting a book for publication with a mind fraying like a storm-tossed flag will be a challenge, but with help, I hope to manage. Because of that difficulty, Holy Ground will be released only on Kindle and not in hard copy.
Summary of Blood on Holy Ground
Blood on Holy Ground follows Miranda to the re-purposed convent of Monte di Angeles, where she plans a quiet summer’s research into an old Native American legend. Instead, almost before she can uncrate her cats, the killings begin, and she finds herself caught up in murder, stalked by the killer, and haunted by prescient dreams. Tennessee hills blessed with a deep and almost conscious peace are overwhelmed by one atrocity after another, as the killer strikes at the land as well as the people.
Miranda, a professor of religion at a small Appalachian college, is an expert on paranormal phenomena, and a woman with rare spiritual gifts. Free of classwork for the summer, she abandons her significant other, artist Jack Crispen, and sets out for the convent-turned-retreat-center at the invitation of an old friend, who settles her into a forest hermitage near the tiny Conicoke Indian reservation. Miranda knows that unless she can persuade the Conicoke Grandmothers to trust her enough to share their traditions, her research will founder, and the heart of the legend will never open to her, since her only other sources are a few heavily-edited church accounts.
When Jack arrives for a visit, the two of them stumble onto the first murder victim, and the killer’s bitter monologues join the mystery narrative. As time passes, Miranda and Jack seem doomed to find more and more evidence of the killer’s crimes, goading the murderer into a paranoid conviction that Miranda is out to destroy him. Abandoning his other targets, he stalks her with obsessive fury. When the Conicoke Grandmothers draw Miranda into their circle, hoping that their combined seeing may show them a way to stop the violence, Miranda is immersed in a flood of visions both from spirits of the land and the killer’s victims.
But the murderer finds himself ensnared by his own evil when his assault on Miranda miscarries, leaving him to prowl the forest wounded and delusional, but lethal as a cornered viper. His toxic obsessions create a vortex of rage and evil that nearly destroys them all in its final combustion. Only the Grandmothers can guide Miranda and Jack along pathways that offer any hope of escape from the firestorm the killer unleashes.