Josie Lark has traded her old life for a converted van named Ginger, an open road, and a dog with one folded ear. Traveling from market to market as a baker-for-hire, she’s learned that the best part of arriving somewhere new is the moment a place reveals itself — and Tidewater Bluff, South Carolina, with its live oaks draped in Spanish moss and its tidal creek cutting through the marsh, is exactly the kind of place she came to find. She arrives at Bellhaven Farm expecting peaches. What she finds is a door that shouldn’t be unlocked, a half-eaten breakfast, and a woman who should have been there to meet her — and isn’t.
Josie isn’t a detective. She’s a baker who pays close attention, and paying close attention is its own kind of investigation. As she sets up her booth at the summer market, bakes her way through Georgia sorghum hand pies and peach scones, and starts asking questions the way good bakers ask questions — slowly, looking for what the evidence actually says rather than what you want it to say — the pieces of what happened to Mae Caldwell begin to fall into place. So does something else: the particular warmth of a community that has learned, over generations, how to take care of its own.
Sifted Out is a debut mystery built on the pleasures of place, craft, and the kind of small-town connection that only happens when you stop long enough to let a place show you who it is. Readers who love the smell of a summer peach and the satisfaction of a mystery that plays fair will find both here, along with a heroine whose instincts — in the kitchen and out of it — are something worth following.
