Barbara Eppich Struna

Barbara Eppich Struna writes historical mysteries rooted in Cape Cod landscapes, local archives, and stories preserved in old houses. The Old Cape House opens her Old Cape series through a dual-time narrative linking a present-day discovery with events surrounding piracy and colonial life in the early eighteenth century. Its setting draws on the Cape's maritime history, including the era of Samuel Bellamy and the Whydah. Struna's later novels in the sequence include The Old Cape Teapot and The Old Cape Hollywood Secret, each returning to regional objects and places as doors into another period. Her work combines domestic history with mystery plotting, giving buildings, heirlooms, and documents an active role in what characters can recover. The Old Cape House established that method by treating a family property not merely as scenery but as evidence. Struna's series invites readers to consider how incomplete records, material traces, and inherited stories can produce competing versions of the same past.