Evelyn “Evie” Walker has built her life restoring damaged paintings in New Orleans. She knows how to read what time, grime, and old varnish try to hide. But when an unmarked package arrives at her studio, the painting inside carries more than age. Beneath its surface is a hidden message calling her back to Mossbury, the hometown she swore she would never return to.

Mossbury is beautiful in the way dangerous places can be beautiful: moss-draped trees, old houses, bayou fog, and too many people who know more than they say. Evie left years ago after seeing something in the woods that no child should have seen. Now the painting has pulled her back into the same shadows, and this time the secrets are tied to her own family.

With the help of Mama Pearl, a wise woman who knows Mossbury’s old wounds, and Silas Beauregard, a man caught between loyalty and guilt, Evie begins to follow the clues hidden in paintings, journals, files, and half-buried memories. The trail leads to the old mill, a missing man, a powerful family, and a crime the town has spent decades pretending not to see.

But Mossbury’s past is not only buried. It is active. It watches. It warns. And the closer Evie gets to the truth, the more dangerous the town becomes.

Deception on Canvas is a Southern gothic mystery about art, memory, family secrets, and the courage it takes to expose what a whole town has tried to cover up.