Ellen Crosby--Bitter Roots (and Happy Endings)

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is spring, and gloriously, time for weddings. How perfect that Ellen Crosby's 12th Virginia Wine Country Mystery, BITTER ROOTS, which revolves around a spring wedding, is out just in time to get us in the mood.

This special fictional wedding echoes a treasured personal moment for Ellen, too, and I'm happy she's sharing it with us today!

ELLEN CROSBY: Forty years ago this October on the day before Halloween my husband and I were married on a gorgeous Indian summer evening in Washington, D.C. Our reception took place under a perfect harvest moon when it was so warm our hosts threw open the French doors to the ballroom of the historic mansion where we were celebrating so everyone could dance by candlelight and moonlight outside on the terrace. Afterward our guests helped gather what remained of the buffet dinner and our wedding cake to bring back to our apartment. The next day we threw an all-day party of leftovers for friends and family who had traveled from New York and New England to be with us. All these years later when I think back on our wedding weekend what I remember most is joy.

In Bitter Roots, the twelfth Virginia wine country mystery, Lucie Montgomery and Quinn Santori are finally getting married—an event that has been evolving over the last few books. First they got engaged. Then they moved in together. They were in no rush to set a date, so they didn’t. (Yes, I heard about that!). Then they did set a date. And finally, they began making wedding plans.

Lucie wants the perfect outdoor spring wedding: the happily-ever-after fairy tale with the dress, the flowers, the intimate ceremony in their garden, the reception with family and friends celebrating at the vineyard, the romantic first dance—all of it.

Unfortunately, she’s not going to get it. Any of it.

A huge swath of withered, dying grapevines is spoiling an otherwise perfect setting for the wedding. Lucie blames the nursery that sold them the diseased vines; so do other vineyard owners dealing with the same problem. The nursery owner pushes back: the dying vines are the result of climate change and the blame game heats up.

Then Eve Kerr, a stunning blonde who works at the nursery, turns up dead less than a week before the wedding and everyone wonders if someone’s anger over the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars pushed them too far. For Lucie Eve’s death is personal: Quinn had taken Eve’s side that the nursery wasn’t responsible for the vineyards’ losses and had secretly agreed to meet her the day she disappeared. Their meeting never took place and Quinn tells Lucie he doesn’t know why Eve, a fellow Californian, wanted to see him. Lucie, however, has a few suspicions of her own. With Quinn now a suspect in a murder investigation, Lucie wonders what else her soon-to-be-husband isn’t telling her about his relationship with Eve.

The search for Eve’s killer and the wedding plans come to an abrupt halt when a violent storm with hurricane-force winds—a derecho—blows through the vineyard one night. The storm, which no one was prepared for, leaves a massive trail of destruction from Atoka, Virginia to Washington, D.C. There is no electricity, no water, no phone or Internet service, no 911 to call for help, no nothing. The garden where the ceremony was to take place is destroyed, the reception site is unsalvageable, and the wedding dinner will almost certainly be thrown out because there is no refrigeration.

With their plans in ruins, Lucie and Quinn turn to each other and decide they’ll improvise, figure things out, make do with what they’ve got. They’ll have a wedding anyway.  But as they make new plans, the knowledge that Eve’s murderer is probably someone close to home—a friend or neighbor—perhaps even a wedding guest, hangs over the preparations. With the Sheriff’s Office closing in on finding the killer, everyone’s anxiety ratchets up: who killed Eve? But the resilience that gets this close-knit community through the devastation of the derecho is going to get them through this tragedy as well.

Despite the heartache and sadness of the last few days, Lucie realizes that while she isn’t going to get the wedding she wanted, or thought she wanted, she and Quinn are going to have the wedding they need. An unforgettable, spontaneous celebration surrounded by everyone they love most, a time to heal from losses, a new beginning.

And, mostly, there will be joy.

DEBS: I know from my experience with Duncan and Gemma that pulling off a fictional wedding is almost as hard as planning one in real life! Quite a few of us REDs have written fictional weddings, interestingly enough, so they will know that a lot of thought goes into getting it just right.

REDS and readers, do you have a great wedding story? Or a favorite fictional wedding? 

Ellen Crosby is the author of the Virginia wine country mysteries, two mysteries featuring international photojournalist Sophie Medina, and MOSCOW NIGHTS, a standalone. Before writing fiction, Crosby worked as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, an economist at the US Senate, and Moscow reporter for ABC Radio News. She lives with her husband in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. after spending many years living abroad in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and the former Soviet Union. Visit her website at www.ellencrosby.com and follow her (very) occasionally on Facebook at EllenCrosbyBooks, sometimes on Twitter at @ellencrosby, but mostly on Instagram at ellencrosbyauthor.