When Michelle Trutor escapes her violent domestic life for the Wharton home, she plans to write a biography of the deceased matriarch, Caroline.  But Caroline has left a web of riddles as guides to a secretive and nefarious life.  Trutor & the Ballooonist is a playful, engrossing, and suspenseful first novel about family, legacy, and inheritance, written with tremendous affection for its cast of offbeat survivors.

 "In Trutor & the Balloonist, Debbie Lee Wesselmann cross-pollinates contemporary realism with Daphne DuMaurier-like intrigue.  The resulting hybrid makes for fascinating reading.  I was hooked!"  -- Wally Lamb 

"Riddle me this.  What has the clues of Raymond Chandler, the allegories of Lewis Carroll, and the quirky characters of Anne Tyler?  This book."  -- Booklist 

"You'll want to portion out chapters as rewards to yourself . . . This story has a ton of heart." -- The Bloomsbury Review