I first came across Patty Templeton's work in the Night Terrors III horror anthology collection. The story was Kill-Box Road Trip, and I was immediately riveted by this young author's style, characters and dialogue. I immediately got online to see what else she had done and my effort was rewarded with this gem, her first novel, There Is No Lovely End. The book can be loosely classified as historical fiction, but it is probably a bit devious to label it so. Yes, it deals with the real Sarah Winchester and her husband William and their daughter Annie. Also, Abraham Lincoln and his secretary William Stoddard make a historical appearance shooting on the White House south lawn...yes that happened! But the actual story requires one to take Alice by the hand and step through a fun house looking glass. Templeton, however, can make the fantastic and absurd seem to the reader as if they could be happening in the next room. She also has the ability to take something as simple as a young girl's tree house come alive in your mind so you can practically feel surrounded by it as you are reading. Not since I read Richard Adam's Girl In A Swing have I come across an author who can take items I would pass right by without looking at in real life and make them take on a fascinating new dimension and an aura of priceless treasure. And then there are the characters...aaah what can I say about her characters? Templeton has the ability to develop characters within your subconscious mind by dropping a fact here and a minor description there as the character dynamically moves through the story. Before you realize it, and without the author drudgingly describing a character as so many writers do, you can picture the person almost three dimensionally...you can practically smell them. This shows me that Patty Templeton has a grace and elegance in her writing style that is seldom seen anymore in our modern era. At times I felt as if I were reading a Larry McMurtry novel if Larry had gobbled a good dose of LSD.Very quickly does this novel begin establishing the rules of its universe. The dead are everywhere, but only certain people can see and hear them. The way this universe comes to be understood by the reader is mainly through the character's actions. The story is often gut busting funny and even contains a beautiful romance among the bizarre events. I can tell you that if you want a book well worth the price, and a read that will have you glued to it until the end, you must read this one of a kind novel. It is rare that I find an author that grips me like this, but Patty Templeton is the real deal. Go for it!