In 1923, the sudden death of a mysterious loner in a seedy Los Angeles hotel leads an eager newspaper reporter to unearth an enormous fortune. His stories trigger a race to claim heirship, bringing hundreds of false claimants out of the woodwork while a young lawyer and seasoned genealogist track down the rightful heirs in Paris and Provence.
The lawyer — strait-laced and puritanical — reluctantly joins the profligate genealogist to find relatives in post-WWI France where they encounter characters ranging from grateful to greedy and sympathetic to seductive. Their inquest culminates in Los Angeles with a contentious trial that tests their ingenuity and persistence.
Novelist Anne Chadwick’s grandfather was in fact the Los Angeles attorney who traced heirs to a similar Irish fortune and fended off 450 false claimants in litigation lasting from 1938 to 1944. She draws upon law journals, newspaper articles, and family stories to create this reimagined historical courtroom fiction that explores multicultural perspectives on family and kinship.
