From Amazon.com
Margaret Lawrence's second mystery about Hannah Trevor, a smart, determined midwife living in a Maine town just after the Revolutionary War, is as good as her first, the stunningly evocative
Hearts and Bones. As before, Hannah is a woman with many talents, living in a period that undervalues them. But Lawrence doesn't hammer away at this unfortunate reality, and the subtle power of her writing lets us understand the landscape in its own social frame, as in this description of a madwoman thinking about her dead husband: "He had been sweet and fond and his passion amazed her, for she had not thought herself a thing that any man could want. But she knew he did not really see her, how the dark, silent birds of rage dived and struck at her ..."
From Library Journal
Eighteenth-century midwife Hannah Trevor, who gave birth to her deaf daughter some ten months after her husband, a British sympathizer, left town, struggles to make ends meet in Rufford, Maine. Amid unrest due to heavy taxation, Hannah and others?including her married lover?discover a murder victim who turns out to be her long-thought-dead husband. Suspicion naturally falls on Hannah, already faced with losing her daughter to the courts. The author of Hearts and Bones (LJ 8/96), a 1997 Edgar nominee, offers an in-depth look at post-Revolutionary America, told with passion, empathy, and gifted writing?a truly marvelous piece of work.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
