Very good. Set after the Revolutionary War. Woman, midwife, strong willed with a barricaded heart. People living with pain and madness from the war.
[read 2003-15 yr ago] ( )

Read back in the late 1990's. It was bloody as I recall, but didn't leave a lasting impression. ( )

PLOT OR PREMISE:
Hannah Trevor is a midwife in 1786 colonial America. She has 3 dead children, a dead husband, and a live daughter whose unacknowledged / unclaimed father is a neighbour. Hannah is present when the authorities discover the raped and mutilated body of another village resident, who has left behind a letter accusing some of the village elite of the crime, including Hannah's former lover.
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WHAT I LIKED:
The plotting is well-done, if somewhat slow to get to the discovery of the body. So well-done in fact that this would be easily readable without the murder mystery (i.e. if it was just a historical novel about life in colonial America). And perhaps that is the highest compliment to be paid to this book -- that it works well on different levels: historical novel (the life of the midwife, the role of women), a mystery novel (who raped and killed the woman?), and, to some extent, a love story (the relationship between Hannah and Daniel, her child's father).
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WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
I figured out the murder mystery far too early, and I spotted other murders long before they actually happened. Fortunately, the great writing carried me to the end anyways.
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BOTTOM-LINE:
A great historical mystery
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DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I am not personal friends with the author, nor do I follow her on social media. ( )

Hannah Trevor is a midwife and herbalist in her late thirties in 1780s New England. When she finds young wife lying murdered, she doesn’t know whom to trust and whom to suspect—especially as the victim has left behind a note accusing, among others, Daniel Josslyn, the married man who was Hannah’s lover and fathered her illegitimate child. But the reader knows from the beginning that Nan Emory somehow orchestrated her own death—for her own dark reasons—with the willing assistance of her unknown lover.

There’s a dark tone to this post-Revolutionary War mystery. Hannah herself was deeply scarred by the loss of her three older children, and Daniel and his compatriots remain haunted by their experiences in the war. Still, characters are shown as capable of growing in understanding of surprising strength. Hannah’s whiny young cousin, for instance, may grow into a man after all, and Daniel’s wife, her health forever destroyed by a horrifyingly botched childbirth, shows enormous dignity and surprising strength of character when she confronts Hannah and asks for her help. I wouldn’t want to read a book this grim every week, but it was satisfying and affecting. ( )

Beautifully, evocatively written, but darker and starker than I prefer. It left me feeling depressed, and heavy, yet empty. ( )