4.5-STAR REVIEW: THE GHOST AND THE KEY by Bill Cusano

About The Book

The Cranberry Family Saga: Book 1
Publication Date: May 14, 2025

With a pitchfork through the man’s groin and another through his chest, it is clear that someone had murdered Chester H. Cranberry. It’s not something that could have happened accidentally. But that was 192 years ago. As Mildred Cranberry, the current family matriarch, puts it, “We have two women, two keys, two pitchforks, and one dead two-timing man.” Who in their right mind would want to dig up that cold case and try to solve it? It’s not like the murderer could be prosecuted in 2024, right? But what if a key piece of evidence can be dug up (literally)? And what if a descendant of Chester’s illegitimate child can get her hands on it? Mildred will need more than the Old Cranberry Ladies Garden Club members to solve this bizarre case. The spiritual support she needs may not be what she expects when the ghost of Elcira Cranberry, the widow murderess herself, arrives to do what? Tell the truth or protect her reputation?

The Ladies Garden Club of Old Cranberry, Connecticut, has a 200-year history that has remained shrouded in secrecy for so long, it has been lost to history, until now. Elcira Cranberry and freedwoman Deborah Townsend knew the men of the town would have no interest in a garden club, so it was the perfect cover for their secret organization. Now, nearly two centuries later, the current members have no idea what those ladies were up to in the early 1800s, right here in Connecticut. But the secret will soon be out.

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The Review

Bill Cusano’s debut novel, The Ghost and the Key, is the beginning of The Old Cranberry Ladies Garden Club series. While there is a large cast of characters, the author thoughtfully includes a list of them at the start of the story, along with some interesting facts and family histories, some of which go back quite a few generations.

The story opens in 1832 on the family farm in Connecticut and definitely sets the stage. The author shows us the privileged life the people led before bringing us to the present on the same farm. A key plot is regarding a two-hundred-year-old murder and the all-important missing key from that time. There’s even a ghost who has others feeling her presence or seeing her in some fashion and who seems to be trying to help solve the mystery.

Each chapter highlights different characters and their points of view. The scent of lilacs is woven throughout, and we need to uncover why.

The author does a great job describing the scenes and clues. Multiple spirits haunt the book throughout, especially at the ancestral home whose ownership is in question. The story has closure dealt in an unexpected way.

I look forward to reading the next books in this series.

The Ghost and the Key is filled with historical facts, ghosts, a missing key, and a two-hundred-year-old mystery to solve.

About The Author Bill Cusano is an author, a retired deacon in the Episcopal Church and a believer that it is the process rather than the outcomes that matter most in our lives. Retired from the corporate world and an eight-year stint running a non-profit feeding program, Bill attacks every project as a ministry, giving it his full commitment. Needing to readjust to life after losing the love of his life to leukemia in April of 2024, Bill returned to writing full-time, resulting in The Old Cranberry Ladies Garden Club series, the motivation and inspiration for which came from his wife’s voracious appetite for reading historical fiction. While this is Bill’s debut novel, he has always been a writer, publishing short stories and poems early on, and then beginning a daily spiritual blog in 2008. You can follow Bill’s Reflections From The Garden Bench along with other writings on his Substack account.