The Rose of Sebastopol

January 15, 2009
An unusual and vivid historical novel tracks a feverish love triangle/mystery across the battlefields of the Crimean War.

Freshness and energy drive McMahon 's latest (The Alchemist 's Daughter, 2006, etc.), which offers a socially alert tableau of mid-19th-century England as the background to an emotional drama, launched when Mariella Lingwood learns that her fianc, Dr. Henry Thewell, recently serving in the war against Russia, has fallen gravely ill. Mariella rushes to his side in Italy only to find him raving about her cousin Rosa, who had daringly joined the ranks of female nursing volunteers led by Florence Nightingale, tending the English soldiers fighting in Turkey as they suffered terribly from disease and fearful conditions. Rosa 's war-front letters to Mariella have been almost as passionate in their avowals of commitment as Henry 's, but has her cousin betrayed her after all? Mariella sets off for Constantinople to find Rosa and uncover the truth. McMahon depicts the battlefields as another shifting social panorama, this one shot with horror and corpses as well as issues of class and acceptable behavior. Here the story 's momentum moves less dynamically, but over time Mariella, an unheroic heroine, learns to be of service, first to her sick servant, later to wounded soldiers. Still searching for her cousin, she falls in love with dashing Captain Max Stukeley and comes intuitively to understand Rosa 's disappearance, while in the process awakening to a different sense of self.

Marked by its passion and social commentary, this is a pleasingly unformulaic read, although its twin time frames and ending may not satisfy all readers.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2009
Is love complicated or a complication? McMahon ("The Alchemist's Daughter") explores this issue in this historical novel set during the Crimean War. Mariella Lingwood is a proper Victorian young lady. She is in love with a distant cousin and well-respected surgeon, Henry Thewell. But the relationship changes when Mariella's dear first cousin Rosa enters the picture. Henry and Rosa are in the Crimea as a surgeon and a nurse, respectively, and Henry falls ill and is sent to Italy to recover. When Mariella rushes to his side, it is Rosa's name he raves in his delirium. And when Rosa is reported missing, Mariella does something unexpected. She travels to the front lines of battle to search for her cousin and learn the truth. But in the midst of war, she finds chaos, which rattles the foundations of her existence, and Mariella must discover her strength and fight for what is truly important. McMahon's complex plot makes for an atypical but satisfying read, even if the ending feels a tad abrupt. Recommended for all fiction collections.Anna M. Nelson, Naples Regional Lib., FL

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2009
This novel works so well on so many levels that its certain to appeal to a broad audience. With a practiced hand, McMahon, author of the best-selling The Alchemists Daughter (2006), physically and psychologically entrenches her characters in the mid-nineteenth century, providing readers with a fascinating window to Victorian lifestyles, mores, and mind-sets. When relatively sheltered and complacent Mariella Lingwood travels far beyond her well-heeled London comfort zone, her life is forever altered in unexpected ways. Setting out to care for her fianc', a Crimean War surgeon who has fallen ill, Mariella learns that her cousin Rosa, a battlefield nurse, has gone missing. As the mystery deepens and Mariella attempts to discover what actually happened to Rosa, her investigation morphs into her own journey of self-discovery. Expect high demand for this superbly rendered mix of historical fiction and mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)