This is an amazing story. The characters are well drawn and the story pulled me in immediately. This is simply an excellent book and I would recommend it to anyone.

On the night of their graduation in June of 1972, a group of students, nine in all, watch the proceedings from their hangout in Beacon hill. The tenth member of their group is the valedictorian. After the ceremonies the group vows to have a reunion twenty years from that date.

In January of 1992, Willa is in Manhattan doing a book signing when she sees Patrick for the first time in twenty years. He's a professor at NYU and wants to help her find the old gang for the promised reunion. They search out and find seven members of the group but nobody has seen or heard from Angel since the decade they graduated. Will hires a detective to track her down but it's as if she disappeared off the face of the earth. At the reunion, there's an undercurrent of tension in when one of the guests winds of dead. The police think it is linked to Angela's disappearance two decades ago.

HINDSIGHT is a masterful work of suspense filled with characters that are very different than the way Willa remembered them. Far different from THE BIG CHILL, the protagonist's growing fears clue the audience that one of the old gang is a killer. Barbara Rogan is a talented storyteller who keeps the tension at a high level and leaves the audience wondering what is really going on.

Harriet Klausner

A superb piece of work. Only someone with "inside" information could have written a book with so much details, showing unfortunately dirty (local, regional and international) politics. Politics that killed, probably what was known to be as one of the best places to live in. It is sad and ironic to see world powers leave such a country to disintegrate and die leaving it at the mercy of its meddling and envious neighbours.

Imagine that a foreigner to Lebanon knows more about it than the Lebanese themselves. It's a great history book, and one would have to read it to really know what was happening in Lebanon.

When I started reading this book, I thought it was just another fairy tale written by a reporter who was seeking fame and fortune. I was wrong. the events in this book are acurate, and the story in all is very intense. I congradulate miss Neman for her honesty and courage. I would love to meet and share some stories with her one day since I grew up in the Covenant's home town... No matter what was said about Shiek Basshir, and no matter what he had done, HE WAS TRULY THE ONLY HOPE LEBANON HAD..

Rowing in Eden is an insightful look at small town americana in the 1990's and of the darkness that lurks beneath the the post card exterior of the seemingly ideal town of Old Wickham. While parts of the story are predictable and the villains are, at times, somewhat one dimensional, what separates this story from others of its type are Rogan's rich drawings of the three main characters and the separate tragedies that unite them. Rowing in Eden is solemn, haunting, and yet a strangely uplifting story about love and hate, death and living, fear of the unknown, and bonds that form in adversity.Rowing in Eden is not a triumph of the human spirit spirit, but rather a testament to its perseverance. I strongly recommend this book to fans of slice-of-life fiction.

Anyone judging this book by its cover is going to immediately think it a bit of Norah Roberts' fluff or a ghost story a la the unsurpassable 'The Uninvited'. Unfortunately, this book cannot be categorized as either romantic suspence adventure or campy haunted house horror. At the very most its story revolves around grim happenstance spotlighting a woman obsessed with dire possibilities which she worries to death. Woe to the reader who empathizes with the negative, and swallowed by it, finds herself/himself unable to reach the same intended life-affirming lesson/message at the end of the book along with our too savvy main character.

The story should engage, but somehow it does not. After all the moody grief, there is no intellectualized savoring of the taste of strawberries as the author infers in her last paragraph. There is nothing but sour repellent mood, which most readers, expecting at least a powerful ghost story will abandon after the first 100 pages.
Emma and her family move out to Long Island and inhabit a large secluded house perched atop a Northshore village flanked by the Long Island Sound. Her husband, Roger, is a smart WASP physicist. Emma is a Jewish writer with socialist tendencies she feels she is betraying by leaving her urban nest of ethnicity. But this is not her only problem---someone is targeting Emma in a dangerous game of malice that tampers her livelihood, her sanity and eventually her life. Because of events that occurred in the past, Roger does not always believe in the validity of Emma's spin on reality. Hence, Emma finds herself isolated at a time in her life where she needs the security of strong friends and family.
Sounds potentially interesting, doesn't it? Well, it loses something in the writing. Narrated in the third person present, the format retains a choppy feel where the author uses too many literary analogies which seem forced, a little too light in atmosphere for the otherwise gloomy ambiance conjured up by the prose. Yes, Emma is a writer, but even so, I felt the author's choice of Emma's career a betrayal of sorts, Rogan utilizes her own personal experience rather than research a more appropriate and far less solitary and depressing form of employment for a woman already stretched to the limit and far too alone.

In a nutshell, this book isn't any fun. The idea is well crafted without any holes, but Ms. Rogan and her editor need to understand that no one wants to read a book where a heightened sense of disillusion and helplessnes are packaged as a ghost story/romance.

This is the first book I have read by Barbara Rogan. I thought that when I bought this book there would be more excitement and more "ghostliness." But the book started putting me to sleep, and that's when I knew I had to get rid of it. The book had good characters but lacked the plot it needed to support that fact. If you like slower moving mysteries, this book is for you.

Emma Roth lives with her spouse Roger and their son Zach in Mid Manhattan until her husband decides to move the family to a Long Island town he loves. Roger locates the perfect home; an old Victorian located on an isolated cliff. Emma, author of ghost stories, realizes the house is the ideal place for a ghost to reside, but is grounded in scientific fact so scoffs at the supernatural.

As soon as the family moves into the home, Emma sees and hears strange things that no one else senses. She hears loud crashing noises, smells lavender, feels cold spots, and notices a computer game that fails to follow its programming. At one time clinically depressed and even hospitalized for her condition, Emma wonders if she is losing her mind. However, she rejects that theory and begins to wonder if someone is toying with her emotions even though she cannot understand how that individual could have access to her home. Whether it is from the mortal or supernatural planes, Emma searches for answers even as she places herself in danger.

Is this novel a well-designed ghost story or a clever psychological suspense drama? Barbara Rogan keeps the audience guessing until the very end and even then she leaves room for continual doubt. SUSPICION is a wonderful novel that captures and holds the reader's attention throughout the tale. Emma is a great character, whose doubts add to the feel of the story line. However, taking a page from the novel, this reviewer suggests readers peruse the novel if they want to know which way the book swings. By doing so, the audience will have experienced a fabulous book.

Harriet Klausner