Jan Jansen

Cistern Secrets Jan Jansen

The story of the love of friends who form familial ties crossing over gender, race, and age. In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the discovery of skeletal remains of two unknown persons on the property of one of the family members leads to a search for answers that unearth long-buried secrets and reveals heartbreaks long-wished forgotten. The story's main characters are Dora Langer Davis - the family matriarch and potato magnate; Twin Herbert - the mixed-race son of unwed parents and bearer of the family torch; and Sara Miller - the retired police forensic scientist who investigates and reveals many buried secrets. The story opens in 1995 when Sara relates the events of the cistern discovery to old friends who have come to visit her. In telling the story, she travels back and forth in time through the twentieth-century, revealing a mosaic of personalities and intrigue. Historic themes of gender and racial bigotry, Prohibition and bootlegging, economic survival during the Great Depression, and the loss of loved ones in World War II, are touched upon as the characters play out their roles.