What is the book last house on the street about?

A community’s past sins rise to the surface in New York Times bestselling author Diane Chamberlain’s The Last House on the Street when two women, a generation apart, find themselves bound by tragedy and an unsolved, decades-old mystery.

1965

Growing up in the well-to-do town of Round Hill, North Carolina, Ellie Hockley was raised to be a certain type of proper Southern lady. Enrolled in college and all but engaged to a bank manager, Ellie isn’t as committed to her expected future as her family believes. She’s chosen to spend her summer break as a volunteer helping to register black voters. But as Ellie follows her ideals fighting for the civil rights of the marginalized, her scandalized parents scorn her efforts, and her neighbors reveal their prejudices. And when she loses her heart to a fellow volunteer, Ellie discovers the frightening true nature of the people living in Round Hill.

2010

Architect Kayla Carter and her husband designed a beautiful house for themselves in Round Hill’s new development, Shadow Ridge Estates. It was supposed to be a home where they could raise their three-year-old daughter and grow old together. Instead, it’s the place where Kayla’s husband died in an accident—a fact known to a mysterious woman who warns Kayla against moving in. The woods and lake behind the property are reputed to be haunted, and the new home has been targeted by vandals leaving threatening notes. And Kayla’s neighbor Ellie Hockley is harboring long buried secrets about the dark history of the land where her house was built.

Two women. Two stories. Both on a collision course with the truth--no matter what that truth may bring to light--in Diane Chamberlain's riveting, powerful novel about the search for justice.

Diane Chamberlain’s latest novel is a historical fiction set in the deep south during the mid 1960s as the civil rights movement is growing, and it felt even more fitting that I finished it on the day we observe Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the states. This dual point of view novel flips between Ellie in 1965 and Kayla in 2010. And while the three novels I’ve read by Chamberlain all tend to have some kind of mystery, this is the first one I’ve read that takes a darker and creepier tone.

What I enjoy most about Chamberlain’s books are how they’re always rooted in historical facts. I always learn something new when I pick up one of her books. 

In The Last House on the Street we meet Kayla, a recently widowed mother of one. Her and her husband were architects building their dream home when he died while working on their house. She has reservations about moving into the house where her husband died, but she also feels obligated to fulfill their dream. When mysterious people and occurrences seem determined to keep her away, she starts searching for answers.

In 1965, Ellie is the twenty year old white daughter of a prominent pharmacist in her small North Carolina town. As her awareness for the unequal treatment of black people in her community grows, she decides to spend her summer not working with her father in his pharmacy but volunteering with SCOPE or the Summer Community Organization and Political Education Project, a program created by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to bring voter registration awareness to black communities in the south. Despite her parents’ opposition, she joins the movement and her life will never be the same.

“There are moments in life when you suddenly see your future and it’s not at all what you expected.”

Diane Chamberlain, The Last House on the Street

I read this one quickly, completely enthralled with both timelines. Chamberlain has done a nice job of amping up the tension and unease in Kayla’s storyline with the questionable people around her, the threatening events she can’t seem to avoid, and the oppressive woods surrounding her house. And Ellie’s experiences volunteering with SCOPE are inspiring yet terrifying. The prejudice and violence depicted in the story is a devastating reminder of the cruelty black people have endured at the hands of fellow human beings.

While overall I did enjoy this one, there were a few times I wanted to take Ellie and Kayla by the shoulders and ask them what they were thinking. They definitely both made some decisions that seemed obviously questionable to me. But the ending was satisfying and I enjoyed learning about SCOPE, which I’d never heard about before this book. It’s a reminder that while things may have improved since the 1960s, it’s at an immeasurable cost, and we still have so very far to go.

2010 – Kayla Carter is a twenty-eight year old widow and mother to a three year old daughter. An architect, she and her late husband designed a beautiful home in a new development in Round Hill, North Carolina.  Now with her husband gone, she has many misgivings about moving into the new home, but feels that she has no choice due to the fact that her husband invested so much love and effort into building it.

Once she and her young daughter do move in, she encounters many factors that want her to leave the house at the end of the street. When she meets up with 65 year old Ellie Hockley, who has returned from California to care for her ailing mother and brother, she begins to learn some of the dark and distressing history of the land upon which her new home has been built…

Now I remember why I liked her writing so much. The narrative flows easily, the characters were likeable, and the subject matter was engrossing. This time out she sheds some much needed light on North Carolina’s dark history. It is sad but true to realize that events such as those portrayed in this novel actually took place only about sixty years ago.

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