THE MAN IN CABIN NUMBER FIVE

In this novel, the lives of two women briefly intersect at a bed-and-breakfast on Lake Arrowhead, where Cabin Five has held a secret for almost three decades.

Annie Parker, the primary narrator of Braun’s series opener, is a child when she; her older sister, Loni; and their parents begin spending summers at their Lake Arrowhead house in California. Annie loves the natural surroundings and quiet respite from busy Long Beach. Her parents sell the summer house when she is 16 years old, but as an adult, when a crisis develops in her marriage, she returns to the tranquility of Lake Arrowhead. She rents a small cabin at a B&B, where she hopes to sort out a new trajectory for her life. Although the bulk of the narrative belongs to Annie, there are short interludes narrated by Alyce Murphy, an only child who was born in 1934 and raised in Paramount, California. Despite her family’s financial struggles during the Depression and her father being drafted to serve in World War II, Alyce describes a relatively carefree early childhood. Everything changes in 1947, when her father’s lifeless body is discovered in a cabin at Lake Arrowhead (“That was the year my father left and never came home again”). It will take almost 30 years for her mother to reveal the grisly truth about her father’s death. Now, she visits the mountain retreat to search Cabin Five for any remnant of her father’s final day. Braun, who has a personal connection to Lake Arrowhead, skillfully uses the silent cabins as the vehicle for bringing together disparate characters, if only momentarily. The author writes that the next two installments of the trilogy, continuations of Annie’s story, will bring additional offspring of long-dead guests of the cabins back to the mountains to recapture pieces of their pasts. In this unpredictable volume, Annie is a likable and sturdy female lead gradually rebuilding her life professionally and romantically. And Alyce’s tale offers an engrossing, poignant subplot. Conversational prose filled with Lake Arrowhead atmospherics sets a comfortable pace, notwithstanding a few too many forays into the minute decorating details of Annie’s renovation projects.

An engaging drama with a strong cast and a final surprise.