In 1897, a midwife returns to her isolated home in the depths of winter to find her family murdered. That’s the premise of “The Kept,” the next book in our Summer Fiction Series, from author James Scott of Whately, Massachusetts.

The book follows Elspeth, and her one surviving son Caleb, as they seek revenge on their family’s murderers. It’s set in upstate New York, where James Scott also grew up. He tells New England Public Radio’s Henry Epp why he chose to set his first novel at the turn of the twentieth century.