Painting Deception

What's your legacy? Put your feet in the sand and contemplate your legacy as you read this funny, humorous and heavy-hearted novel. On the beach you'll be laughing and crying between the changing of the tides. Take a trip with the main character and begin to contemplate what you and Lily Clarke will leave behind. Lily Clarke is the elderly mother of three dysfunctional and distant daughters. She makes life altering discoveries regarding her new found wealth and other dark secrets, after she receives a diagnosis that she has a terminal illness. The challenges and decisions she must face in her final months will test her and define her lasting legacy. Contemplate how you'll create a legacy from your vestige of existence. The book includes family drama, interesting characters, humor and many twists and turns. It also includes historical fiction. From the book: Chapter 1:The old saying goes that everyone has a story. Unfortunately today, October 2, 2016, Lily Elizabeth Clarke’s story was coming to a quick end. It was a sunny day at the Sacred Heart Cemetery in Dundalk, Maryland, as cars began pulling up shortly after noon for her 1:00 p.m. funeral. Old rusted smoke stacks from a bankrupt steel mill could be seen in the background of the cemetery in this gritty part of Baltimore. Neighborhoods with seventy-year-old brick weathered rowhouses surrounded the neatly manicured cemetery.The funeral was taking place exactly as Lily had arranged it. No details were left out of the planning. While she was alive, she made sure that her funeral, burial arrangements, and reading of her Last Will and Testament were organized and would be executed exactly to her wishes. No one knew what would take place over the next twenty-four hours and weeks to follow except Lily, and she was deceased. Not even her lawyer and confidant, Jake Snyder, knew all of the hidden details that Lily had intentionally failed to disclose to him; some of which had remained bottled and silenced for a lifetime. He had been Lily’s lawyer for more than twenty years, and over the next two days, he would implement her final plan exactly as she had instructed.Jake knew her for almost his whole life and thought he knew everything about her, but he didn’t know the dark secrets about her past or the ones she intended to reveal in stages following her death. The health crisis that led to Lily’s death was nothing compared to the mental struggle she faced as a result of the long forgotten secrets resurfacing during the final months of her life. Lily’s struggle whether to reveal her secrets while she was alive and how to reveal them after her death would change lives and define her legacy. Lily didn’t want to have a formal viewing at a funeral home. She wanted her funeral to be short and sweet at the gravesite, so that everyone could get on with their lives. Lily’s three daughters didn’t remain close to her after they graduated from college and settled in the state of their college alma maters. Lily was unsure why her children didn’t stay close to her. She wasn’t sure if it was her sometimes overbearing husband or the fact that her children wanted to get out of the dirty blue-collar town Baltimore was in the 1970s. Maybe they were a little rebellious, stubborn, and adventurous, all rolled into one. In truth, Lily often wondered if the secrets she harbored created impenetrable barriers in her relationship with her daughters. However, it seemed the longer they were away from Baltimore, the further they grew apart from Lily, and she didn’t have the strength or courage to correct the situation. Her three children didn’t have the strength or courage to correct it either. They had their own problems and issues that Lily couldn’t correct once they became adults and left her nest. As she grew older, not needed and then elderly, she learned to accept the emotional and physical distance while silently hoping their relationship would one day get better. Her secrets and ...

Brian Hebbel is a gifted and talented author. His creative mind, lifetime of experiences and passionate heart, drive the good and bad in his new novel. His new book, Painting Deception will make you laugh, cry and leave you contemplating your own legacy. In addition to his writing, he is an often requested public speaker and Master of Ceremonies to the Government contracting community. He has performed in acting roles and voice-overs in the past. He loves writing stories with unique twists, turns and emotional endings. This is what he accomplished in Painting Deception.