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DEAD RECKONING: A Rosalind Schmidt Genealogical Mystery
In a web of genealogy, murder, and karma, Rosalind Schmidt, the sole survivor of her family, uncovers a dark ancestral secret.
Fate turns sinister when she finds a co-worker dead and suspicion points directly at her. As she wakes from restless dreams of her ancestors, Rosalind questions her sanity. Are these glimpses remnants of past lives or echoes of a karmic destiny? When Rosalind learns of a long-lost relative connected to a haunting murder, she turns amateur sleuth to track two killers and unravel her bloodline.
With two unsolved murders bearing down on her, she must dig deep to uncover hidden truths.
Rosalind races to unearth the secrets within her ancestral roots. Will she untangle her family history and clear her name? Her survival hinges on a race against time. Can she live long enough?
"Dead Reckoning" explores the interconnectedness of generations, the relentless pursuit of justice, and the chilling consequences of a legacy steeped in darkness as Rosalind unearths the truth and confronts the ancestral forces that exhaust her existence.
Fate turns sinister when she finds a co-worker dead and suspicion points directly at her. As she wakes from restless dreams of her ancestors, Rosalind questions her sanity. Are these glimpses remnants of past lives or echoes of a karmic destiny? When Rosalind learns of a long-lost relative connected to a haunting murder, she turns amateur sleuth to track two killers and unravel her bloodline.
With two unsolved murders bearing down on her, she must dig deep to uncover hidden truths.
Rosalind races to unearth the secrets within her ancestral roots. Will she untangle her family history and clear her name? Her survival hinges on a race against time. Can she live long enough?
"Dead Reckoning" explores the interconnectedness of generations, the relentless pursuit of justice, and the chilling consequences of a legacy steeped in darkness as Rosalind unearths the truth and confronts the ancestral forces that exhaust her existence.
302 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 16, 2023
3 people are currently reading
9 people want to read
About the author
Anna Dalhaimer Bartkowski
6 books21 followersGrowing up in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Anna Dalhaimer Bartkowski caught the genealogy bug early. She loved and loved going to libraries to read old newspaper obituaries on microfiche and became a family heirloom collector.
She graduated from Marquette University earning her BA in Journalism and Marketing and worked in newspaper advertising for years. A career move to Arizona brought her back to actively researching her family tree and writing their stories.
To celebrate her heritage she wrote Dead Reckoning – A Rosalind Schmidt Genealogical Mystery, Value Meals on the Volga, Maggie Visits Grandpa, Maggie Visits Argentina, and Grebel & Gemütlichkeit.
She graduated from Marquette University earning her BA in Journalism and Marketing and worked in newspaper advertising for years. A career move to Arizona brought her back to actively researching her family tree and writing their stories.
To celebrate her heritage she wrote Dead Reckoning – A Rosalind Schmidt Genealogical Mystery, Value Meals on the Volga, Maggie Visits Grandpa, Maggie Visits Argentina, and Grebel & Gemütlichkeit.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 6, 2023
Dreaming, what dreaming? I couldn’t put Anna Dalhaimer Bartowski’s latest book, Dead Reckoning, down long enough to sleep. It was just that captivating.
Anna takes an ordinary workday situation and crafts it into an extraordinary tale. Murder usually is. Then she gently rustles leaves on a family tree to deliver a suspense-filled historical story that weaves day and night, observation and imagination, truth and fiction in a way that really hooked me. With a fascinating tale, she certainly elevates searching through family history archives out of tedium and makes it quite a thrill. Yes, although the ending was entirely satisfying, I really do want more. When will she write another?
The heroine, Rosalind Schmidt, finds herself tangled in two very different murders. Both present threats that drag her through the story like an ocean undertow. She needs her own creativity and pluck if she is to escape. She escapes one mystery to find the other blacker and worsening, then escapes that one to find the first closing in ominously.
Normally, I dislike the use of a dream sequence “trope,” and it makes me fume at the trickery. But, far from unleashing disbelief, Bartowski weaves her stories with enough cultural dream-walking theory and factual historical detail from the heroine’s family history research, that the experience is more one of walking in the collective unconscious and the guidance of ancestors than “awaking” with fantasy left behind. Far from resulting in disbelief, the reader, likely a family historian, imagines taking Rosalind’s place. It could happen.
In her story, Rosalind finds both murders have an equal ring of truth and echo the challenge to survive. Anna describes her novel as a “modern-day and historical multigenerational genealogical mystery.” Her description promises a complicated creation that either the family historians or the mystery fan will find tempting and very hard to resist or put down. Family historians and historical mystery fans tend to be sleuths at some level. Dead Reckoning certainly delivers that and more on her promise to the reader. Do not miss this one.
Anna takes an ordinary workday situation and crafts it into an extraordinary tale. Murder usually is. Then she gently rustles leaves on a family tree to deliver a suspense-filled historical story that weaves day and night, observation and imagination, truth and fiction in a way that really hooked me. With a fascinating tale, she certainly elevates searching through family history archives out of tedium and makes it quite a thrill. Yes, although the ending was entirely satisfying, I really do want more. When will she write another?
The heroine, Rosalind Schmidt, finds herself tangled in two very different murders. Both present threats that drag her through the story like an ocean undertow. She needs her own creativity and pluck if she is to escape. She escapes one mystery to find the other blacker and worsening, then escapes that one to find the first closing in ominously.
Normally, I dislike the use of a dream sequence “trope,” and it makes me fume at the trickery. But, far from unleashing disbelief, Bartowski weaves her stories with enough cultural dream-walking theory and factual historical detail from the heroine’s family history research, that the experience is more one of walking in the collective unconscious and the guidance of ancestors than “awaking” with fantasy left behind. Far from resulting in disbelief, the reader, likely a family historian, imagines taking Rosalind’s place. It could happen.
In her story, Rosalind finds both murders have an equal ring of truth and echo the challenge to survive. Anna describes her novel as a “modern-day and historical multigenerational genealogical mystery.” Her description promises a complicated creation that either the family historians or the mystery fan will find tempting and very hard to resist or put down. Family historians and historical mystery fans tend to be sleuths at some level. Dead Reckoning certainly delivers that and more on her promise to the reader. Do not miss this one.
Displaying 1 of 1 review