47 Sorrows

July 29, 2013
Kellough revisits pre-Confederation Canada in the third installment of her Thaddeus Lewis series. The year 1847 sees calamity as a potato blight scourges Ireland; what would have been a humanitarian disaster on its own is made immeasurably worse when British authorities eschew aid in favor of forcing the Irish to choose between near certain starvation and chancy emigration. Canada is flooded by desperate refugees, easy fodder for disease and exploitation. Protestant minister Thaddeus Lewis and his son Luke find themselves caught up in a mystery rooted deep in the Irish tragedy, a series of seemingly unconnected deaths linked by two green ribbons and a common history of prejudice, violence and a deadly cycle of retribution. Kellough embraces the history of her native Ontario, accepting the ugly facts along with the laudable ambitions of a few to improve a society divided by superstition, class and religion, a society that punished victims and rewarded exploiters. While Kellough takes some liberties with the actual history of Thaddeus Lewis to facilitate her tale, in grander matters she paints an accurately unsentimental picture of Victorian-era Ontario in a time of plague and disaster, eschewing narrative convenience for historical verisimilitude. Canadian distribution: UTP. U.S. distribution: Ingram. Agent: Robert Lecker.