Woman in Hiding

In the once thriving town of Clarksville, NC, the only business now of significance is the mill owned by John Chandler and managed by Selden Clark, a fourth generation family member of the town's founders. Beyond Selden efficiently managing the mill, John has no use for Selden or the Clarks, who he feels are of no note beyond being the town's founding family. After John dies in an accident at the mill, Selden marries John's daughter, Deborah Chandler, who has always been in love with Selden and who didn't marry him earlier in deference to her father. Immediately following the wedding, Deborah learns Selden's true nature in discovering that he killed her father, and as she wants to annul the marriage, she learns the hard way that he is trying to kill her as well in what is designed to appear a suicide in she purposefully crashing her car, all in his end goal of owning the mill. In surviving the crash largely unharmed, she is able to go into hiding using the assumed name of Ann Clark in her goal of locating Patricia Monahan, Selden's ex-girlfriend who would be able to corroborate the story of Selden's murderous nature to the police. Deborah's ability to hide is made more difficult when Selden, in Deborah's body never having been found and thus he suspecting that she is indeed still alive, offers a sizable reward for information on her whereabouts. Keith Ramsey, a drifting war veteran who is slowing making his way to California, meets "Ann", and truly wants to do what is best for her in seeing that there is something troubling her, his gauge of what that best is which may be dependent upon whether he believes her story when she ultimately does tell him the truth. If he doesn't believe her, he may inadvertently place her in danger at Selden's murderous hands.