The Angels' Lament: Etched in Granite Historical Fiction Series - Book Two

The Angels’ Lament, is the second book in the Etched in Granite Historical Fiction Series.
For the Hodgdon sisters,1872 is a year of reckoning. The Civil War ended. It is a time for radical social and economic change in America—a time for expansion, discovery, and healing. For some, it meant piecing together the fragments of their lives, rebuilding families, homes, and communities. For others, it is time to leave the safety of their small towns and venture into nearby, rapidly growing cities, to prosper and find their long-awaited independence as industrial wage earners.

Book One, set on a rural county farm in New Hampshire, is where we come to know Abigail and others living and working there. Their tales, carefully woven together, bound by their afflictions and the will to survive, do not end there. It is only the beginning.

Beneath the anonymous graves, spanning generations, oceans, and continents, hidden stories beg to be told. While embarking on Abigail’s journey in the first book, we are afforded a peek into the world of her sister, Sarah, bringing us to The Angels’ Lament.
This narrative is not only about Sarah. It is an expansion of the Hodgdon family that reaches back to the shores of Ireland during the Great Hunger—mass starvation and exile—a catastrophic historical event systematically deemphasized and misunderstood.

Alone and determined, Sarah boards a train, trading farm life in the wilds of New Hampshire for the textile mills of Fall River. Woefully disillusioned, she finds herself trapped in a brutal factory, a spinner’s world, while living in filth in a cramped tenement unfit for humans.

Her torment wildly escalates when she learns the fate of her family—her sister locked away in the County Farm, and her mother’s remains scattered amongst the charred ruins of their beloved home. She pursues a risky and unlikely escape route.

About to drown in a sea of spindles, she meets lamplighter, August Wood, a street kid from New York City, in and out of the Children’s Asylum, and traveler of the Orphan Trains. He illuminates and bridges the gap between the affluent and the undesirables that dwell in the murky shadows.
Everything collides when Bess Adams, a captivating woman across town, emerges, navigating the dense world of the local elite, offering a glimpse into an era when women were beginning to take the stage. Survival, a resilient thread of music, interweaves their compelling stories, binding them together, unveiling grievous misdeeds from the past. Uniting them in ways never thought possible.

Based on local history, the characters are fictitious, intended to bring voice to actual events typically lost in the wreckage.
Book Three, The Book of Samuel, coming soon.