Lucretia Walsh Grindle

Lucretia Grindle's writing is a wonder. After reading only a few paragraphs, I knew The Devil's Glove would be a novel I loved. Grindle's descriptive narration is entrancing - stirring yet delicate, never heavy-handed. Her dialogue and characterization are skillful and immersive. Lucretia Grindle is truly a master storyteller.
The Devil's Glove takes place in the late 1600s in a small settlement on the coast of what is now the state of Maine. It is slightly before the Salem Witch Trials, and some characters are based on real people. Grindle's research is extensive.
Resolve and her mother, Deliverance, are healers taught by indigenous tribes. While the villagers use their healing skills, they are looked on with suspicion and quietly accused of witchcraft. Their closeness with the indigenous people also draws negative attention from the villagers, as there is increasing tension between the two factions. As Resolve's prescience strengthens, she begins to question many parts of her life.
The Devil's Glove is a fascinating book with many interesting historical details. I plan to read more of Ms. Grindle's work as I found her writing exceptional.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Casa Croce Press for the ARC of this book and for introducing me to this author.… (altro)

This is more ambitious than the run-of-the-mill crime fiction at £0.89, and worth much more in every sense.

It takes the form of the diary of an Italian anti-fascist partisan interleaved with a contemporary whodunnit, the solution to the latter obviously relating closely to the events described in the former.

I found both parts of the narrative equally engaging, for different reasons, and with different reservations: the diary entries, concerning events surrounding the deaths of a partisan unit in 1944 were affecting in their evocation of what must have been horrendous times. But the characterisation here was flat, causing a particular problem because so much of the novel turns on identities (real, imagined and stolen), more specifically names (married, maiden and assumed). With only a couple of exceptions, I was quite unable to remember who on earth was who (although, come to think of it, this may be entirely intentional on the part of the author).

The contemporary detective novel is well enough done, although in these pages, while the smaller cast of characters is more easily distinguishable, they seem comparatively trivial; we get, too, little sense of contemporary Florence, or of any meaningful relationship between Italy and her past, except in the very specific cases of individual partisans, sixty years on. A minor cavil, perhaps.

The end of the novel comes more as a satisfying resolution than surprising revelation, but is no less effective for that.

I would heartily recommend this book to readers interested in a story of Italian resistance; it will be of less interest to avid thriller readers.… (altro)