Authors: Margaret Lawrence.
Mass Market Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: 1997-10-01


Reviews :

   

In an American nation newly born, in the killing freeze of merciless Maine winter, one remarkable woman--a midwife who helps bring life into this world--must now confront death in its most depraved and treacherous form. . .

    The physical and emotional scars of the Revolutionary War are an important part of this tremendous new first mystery -- the most exciting debut since Laurie R. King and The Beekeeper's Apprentice. Like King's Mary Russell, the heroine of Lawrence's book is an unconventional woman, unwilling to be forced into an historical mold. Hannah Trevor is a gifted, educated midwife who carries wisdom and sorrow with her in equal measures: one husband and three children dead, another daughter born out of wedlock and deaf. When a young woman is raped and murdered, leaving behind a note that implicates her daughter's father, Hannah is the only person in the small Maine town of Rufford with enough insight and experience to uncover the truth....

Authors: Margaret Lawrence.
Mass Market Paperback, 416 pages
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: 1998-10-01
Edition: Reprint

Reviews :

    As a young widow, midwife Hannah Trevor is regarded by the law as unable to support her daughter, Jennet, and at any minute, the eight-year-old may be taken away from her and sold as an indentured servant. When she becomes the suspect in a murder, Hannah must save not only her own life, but that of her daughter's as well....

    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 ..." ...

Authors: Margaret Lawrence.
Hardcover, 400 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: 1998-11-01
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    It is a chilly Autumn in Rufford, Maine, but violent passions and tempers inflamed in the wake of America's war for independence are still burning white hot. Preparing for her upcoming marriage--pregnant with the child of Daniel Josselyn--Hannah Trevor's happiness is overshadowed by news that the cousin Jonathan is missing and feared dead. One of a band of Regulators--farmers turned militant rebels in protest of crippling taxation--Jonathan is presumed to have fled into the Outward, the vast forests that border on Rufford. Then, with tensions in town reaching an explosive level, a body is discovered at the edge of the same wilderness. Meanwhile, it is Muster Day in Rufford, when the militia is massed to drill in anticipation of new conflicts that may threaten the newborn country. At their head is Major Josselyn, torn in two by his responsibilities to maintain order and his sympathy for the men at whose side he fought in the war of Revolution--many of whom have already been consigned to the brutal debtor's prison. When a second murder rocks the town of Rufford on the eve of his marriage to Hannah, Daniel is arrested. Once again, Hannah will be forced to piece together a patchwork of suspects and motivations--as she pieces together the quilt for her marriage bed--is she is to clear Daniel's name. In the end, clinging desperately to her hope for a peaceful life with Daniel, her daughter Jennet, and her unborn child, she'll find herself confronted with the prospect of the ultimate sacrifice. In her most passionate, suspenseful and moving novel to date, Margaret Lawrence brilliantly evokes a forgotten world and one astonishingly memorable woman....

    Life in Maine in the years after the Revolutionary War continues to be hard for Hannah Trevor, the gifted, conflicted midwife who sprang to full reality in Margaret Lawrence's Hearts and Bones and continued to grow in its equally strong successor, Blood Red Roses. Five months pregnant with the much-wanted child of her lover, the English aristocrat Daniel Josselyn, strong-willed Hannah still can't decide if she wants to marry him. "It seemed too much like a fairy tale to be credited and, like a stone in her boot heel, the voice of reason grumbled: Madam Midwife, you are eight-and-thirty, and froward. He finds you pleasant enough in the darkness, no doubt.... I am not made for a gentleman's lady. I will wound him one day, deep, deep." Meanwhile, Hannah's position as an equal, honored guest in the welcoming household of her Aunt Julia and Uncle Henry Markham is threatened by the demands of their jealous daughter-in-law, Sally. Sally is married to the Markham's fugitive son Jonathan who is under sentence of death for nonpayment of taxes to the financially and morally bankrupt new country. "Julia stared into the kettle, her mouth set and her eyes brimming. If he lived and was pardoned at last, Jonathan would one day inherit Two Mills from his father. And Julia's own place in the house would then depend almost entirely upon Sally's good will." Hannah and Daniel's troubles are increased by two murders: of a local sawbones who brought charges against the midwife for criticizing his overuse of narcotics, and of a high-court official killed by militiamen under Daniel's control.

As she did in her two previous books, Lawrence uses the metaphor and skills of quilting to stitch together fictional and real public documents (a quote from Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson is particularly telling), recipes, household tips, journal fragments, and easily accessible period dialogue into a book with perhaps a bit more history than mystery but enough delight and dignity to be fully satisfying. --Dick Adler...

Authors: Margaret Lawrence.
Mass Market Paperback, pages
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: 1999-09-01

Authors: Robert J. Randisi. Sandra Brewer. Margaret Lawrence. Marthayn Pelegrimas. Carol Caverly. Hugh Holton. Ann Blaine. Mark Richard Zubro. John Lutz. Edward D. Hoch. Loren D. Estleman. Thomas Sullivan. Helen Esper Olmsted. William X. Kienzle.
Hardcover, 273 pages
Publisher: Write Way Pub
Publication Date: 1996-10


Reviews :

    A compilation of new short stories from the best in the U.S....

Authors: Margaret Lawrence.
Hardcover, 416 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: 2000-07-01
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

   

John Frayne gained a fortune but lost two families in his years spent in the West. Now, in January 1809, he has returned to New Forgne in the state of New York to reclaim his father's confisicated lands and the affection of an abondoned son. Upon his arrival, he witnesses a disturbing series of occurences near the ruins of his family home. A greiving young woman in ragged clothes slides a wrapped body through a hole in the frozen surface of the Bay of Spirits. Soon after, she is set upon by a trio of thugs-and only through Frayne's timely intervention does she escape an outrage worse than the one she has already endured.

The woman is well known to the people of New Forge: a mute "madwomen" whose guraded, secret name is Jennet Trevor. Frayne-whoe own lkife has been tainted by guilt and grief-knows what it is to suffer disgrace and is drawn to the beautiful and damage woman. When she is declared indigent and insane and out up for auction, it is Frayne who bids for her future.

But he can never own this perplexing, wild creature. For Jennet is not bad, but she is a woman courageously determined to weave her life with treads of her own choosing. Others will be drawn to her crumbling manor on dangeroulsy disputed land- some to be healed, some to destro. But only the respect, love and kindness of the damned and secretive Frayne can give Jennet the wings to fly above a coarse and killing world that is closing in on them-and impel her to share with him her true extraordinary self....

    This absorbing historical novel is less a mystery than a meditation on love between outcasts. In this instance the chief outcasts are John Frayne, recently returned from explorations in the western territories to reclaim the property in upstate New York stolen when his father was hanged as a Tory sympathizer, and Jennet, a young hearing-impaired wild woman offered for sale as an indentured servant after being captured while burying her mother (Hannah Trevor, familiar to readers of Margaret Lawrence's skillful post-Revolutionary War mystery series) in the frozen lake near the Frayne homestead in 1809. A crippled furniture maker who deserted the Napoleonic army at Austerlitz and an old master craftsman complete the roster of the exiled and damaged. Along with Jennet, they help Frayne rebuild his father's estate, which is strategically situated at the head of the bay near the Canadian border, from which all trade has been embargoed by President Thomas Jefferson. "An army is massing at the Canadian border, and apprentices are eager to volunteer, to march off and attack the British at the head of the lake. Teach the Redcoats a lesson, that is the cry now. Bonaparte is riding roughshod over Europe and Nelson's navy is bleeding; he stops neutral ships to kidnap Yankee seamen and press them into the service of England. The myth of American independence is one King George can no longer afford to indulge."

While the novel begins slowly with Frayne's return 10 years after abandoning his unfaithful wife and 2-year-old son, its power builds as the multiple dimensions of the main characters are explicated. Frayne's wife Hester has paid dearly for her infidelity, blackmailed into marriage to an ally of the scheming shopkeeper who holds the corrupt title to Frayne's land. And Tim, John's young son, is torn between his loyalty to his stepfather and his memories of the man who left so long ago. Uncertain how to approach his wife and son, Frayne attempts to build a new life with Jennet and in the process recapture Tim's affection. The harsh landscape is lovingly evoked, and although the climax smacks of the melodramatic, the sweep of history drives this artfully written book to a somewhat predestined conclusion. --Jane Adams...