Simply Dead
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A midwife disappears after attending the birth of a child in another community, leading to an investigation that uncovers innumerable lies and secrets.
1790s, Maine. In the depths of winter Hortense, a midwife, disappears after attending a birth in the woodlands. During the search Will Rees finds her struggling through the snow and woods without shoes or a coat.
After two young men begin stalking the community in search of her – including targeting Rees’s own family – she is questioned further and claims she was kidnapped . . . but Rees and his wife Lydia are suspicious. It is agreed Hortense’s presence is endangering everyone’s safety and she needs to leave. As the arrangements are made she is hidden in Zion, the local Shaker community, only while there a Shaker Sister is murdered. Witnesses describe a man fitting Josiah Wooten’s description, a ferocious man living in the woods with two young sons.
What is the truth behind Hortense’s disappearance, and who is responsible for the death of the Shaker Sister?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A teenage midwife named Hortense goes missing in Kuhns's solid seventh whodunit set in late-18th-century Maine (after The Shaker Murders). Will Rees, a weaver who's also a skilled investigator, joins the hunt for Hortense, who disappears after helping a family with a smooth delivery. Rees finds Hortense, shoeless and almost frozen to death, in the snowy woods. When she revives, Hortense provides few details about what happened, though a reference to seeing "so much blood" suggests that she witnessed an act of violence. Rees becomes convinced that Hortense is not telling all she knows, and the matter takes a personal turn when his daughter Jerusha is attacked by two young men who initially mistook her for Hortense. For her safety, Hortense is soon sent to a nearby Shaker community, where a murder ups the ante. The plot twists rank among the author's most clever. Historical fiction fans will be pleased.
