Sea of Coins

When Hermosa Perry's older brother Robert mysteriously dies, she goes back home to her mother's house near Almadina, a village and art colony on the coast north of San Francisco. Janis Evelyn Dunn Perry—Jed Perry to her friends and the admirers of her paintings—has fallen into one of her multitudes of depressed phases, and Hermosa has no choice but to take charge.Dealing with her own problems—a boyfriend having an affair, a sprained ankle, grief for her brother—Hermosa finds herself facing the puzzle of her brother's death: suspected foul play. One by one elements of Robert's secretive live are revealed. She meets Robert's 3-year-old son and his latest girlfriend, the boy's mother, is the sister of Hermosa's deceased best high school friend. While Jed is in the hospital after a terrifying psychotic break, Hermosa discovers $100,000 in cash and a gun hidden in Robert's room. She has to ask herself why she ever came home.Luckily, she renews the friendship of a man she knew in high school. Hal Iddings is a handsome carpenter and cabinet maker. Their attraction blooms into an affair, which eases Hermosa's growing anxiety about what her brother was into.But the mystery is complicated by Hermosa's own fractured family history. She learns she has a half-sister she never knew she had, Catalina, erased from family mementos by her own mother, Jed Perry. The tangle tightens as Jed relates the legend of a curse on her first husband Crispin Dunn's family laid by Xanthus, a god of the sea.This belief penetrates the minds of several Almadina denizens: Catalina, who fears for her son; Ondine, owner of a tarot card and herbals shop; and Phoebe Iddings, Hal's mother. They believe that Xanthus is looking for sacrifice, and will not stop taking Dunn son's until he gets the thing he desires returned: the silver clasp lost from his sea cloak.Hermosa begins to fear that the buckle she has kept all these years, is that clasp.Everything comes to a dangerous head when, after Robert's memorial, a suspicious fire rips through Hal's cabin and Catalina reveals herself as Jed's daughter to everyone at Robert's memorial. Hermosa must chase down rumors that Catalina's father, thought dead for many years, is alive. This and the manifestations of a being dwelling in the sea, haunting the coast, bringing unseasonable squalls on shore.Hermosa struggles to protect her mother and Hal, but threats rise up when Robert's plan for economic security is ripped apart by the dark, criminal forces he aligned with.At gunpoint, Hermosa and Hal bargain for their lives, while the sea creature circles ominously over the wreck of the Falcon below in Falcon Cove.