Suzanne Bolden & Brenda Felber

Unsettled Things

In the Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky, the past is not ready to rest.

Why is the ghost of a lady in white haunting a lonely Kentucky graveyard?

When twelve-year-old Lillia Pameroy arrives at Kentucky Lake to stay on a borrowed houseboat with Grauntie Nora, strange happenings begin almost at once. In the darkness, bluegrass music seems to drift through the night air. A figure appears high on a boulder near the shore. Before long, Lillia is drawn into a mystery tied to the Land Between the Lakes, where the past still lingers in heartbreaking ways.

With the help of her new friend Zoe, Lillia begins to uncover the story of a woman whose family was torn apart when people were moved off the land. Clues lead to an overgrown family graveyard, long-buried records, and a treasured old doll that appears in Lillia’s imaginings.

As the mystery deepens, Lillia must use her unusual gift to piece together a story of love, loss, and family. Can she uncover the truth and help reunite what was broken so long ago?

The Setting for Unsettled Things…

The National Recreation Area known as Land Between the Lakes, which stretches across both Kentucky and Tennessee, is the setting for Unsettled Things. Years ago, the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers were dammed to help control flooding, and the lakes formed by those projects became Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley.
As the land changed, entire villages were moved, disrupting lives, homes, and long-established communities. The area that remained was set aside as a beautiful recreational destination for everyone to enjoy. That is how Land Between the Lakes came to be.
Visitors today can stop at the Golden Pond Visitor Center, where Lillia gets her map of the small family cemeteries that still remain scattered throughout the area. She also visits the Homeplace, a living history farm and museum that recreates life in the 1850s, where even more strange imaginings begin to unfold.
If you travel to Land Between the Lakes, you can stay in Kentucky State Park lodges, cabins, or campgrounds. Or, like Lillia, you can rent a houseboat and explore the lakes from the water.
Elia Locardi (photographer)

Scroll down to explore photographs that inspired Unsettled Things and discover how the history and landscape of Kentucky’s Land Between the Lakes helped shape Lillia’s first mystery.

During their bike ride through Land Between the Lakes, Lillia and Zoe stop to watch a herd of buffalo. Moments like this helped bring a sense of adventure and wonder to their journey in Unsettled Things.
The Golden Pond Visitor Center takes its name from the former town of Golden Pond, described on this sign. In Unsettled Things, Lillia and Zoe meet Emily there, a spirit guide who becomes part of their journey into the past. The real history of vanished communities in Land Between the Lakes helped inspire the book’s mystery and its themes of memory, family, and what was left behind.
While peering into this barn, Lillia heard voices that seemed to drift out of another time. She could feel the past reaching out to her.
From the parlor, this view across the dogtrot into the farmhouse kitchen helped bring the Homeplace vividly to life in Unsettled Things.
Lillia and Zoe climbed up to this attic bedroom in the farmhouse, a quiet space that added to the mystery and historical feel of the Homeplace.
Lillia’s imagination and the past seemed to blur together as she looked at a photograph like this one. In her imagining, the lady in white stepped from the picture frame, crossed the room, and slipped out the window.
On the porch at the Homeplace, Emily waited beside this cat for Lillia to come up the path, adding to the feeling that something unusual was about to unfold.
After an unsettling imagining, Lillia came upon a bonnet hanging on this split-rail fence, a clue that seemed to blur the line between past and present.
The LBL National Recreational Area welcomes many tourists every year.

These photographs helped inspire the setting, history, and haunting atmosphere of Unsettled Things, where Lillia’s journey through Land Between the Lakes brings her face to face with both the beauty of the present and the mysteries of the past.