Cradle to Grave

April 14, 2014
At the start of Kuhns’s intriguing third late-18th-century historical (after 2013’s Death of a Dyer), traveling weaver Will Rees and his new wife, Lydia, leave their Maine farm for a wintry trip to the isolated village of Dover Springs, N.Y., where their Shaker friend, Sister Hannah, aka “Mouse,” has been accused of kidnapping Maggie Whitney’s five children after finding their mother too drunk to care for them. En route, Will and Lydia get word that Maggie has been murdered, probably by Mouse. On arrival in Dover Springs, Will struggles to pry information out of the close-mouthed residents, nearly all of whom prove to be hiding dreadful secrets. At times, the tribulations of the impoverished Whitney children threaten to overwhelm the story, but readers will sympathize with Will, whose interactions with the children spur deep guilt about how uninvolved he was in the raising of David, his grown son. Agent: Mitchell S. Waters, Curtis Brown.

June 1, 2014
Revolutionary War veteran Will Rees' third case takes him from his home in Maine to the Shaker community of Mount Unity, New York, where accusations of child neglect blossom into murder.Hannah "Mouse" Moore, an old friend of Rees and his bride, Lydia, is in unexpected trouble in Mount Unity, whose elders have accused her of kidnapping. And with good reason, for when Rees and Lydia (Death of a Dyer, 2013, etc.) make the journey to Dover Springs, the little town near Albany where the community has put down roots, they find that Mouse freely admits carrying off Maggie Whitney's four children and a foundling she'd taken in as well. It was for the children's own good, she insists; Maggie was criminally neglecting Jerusha, 8; Simon, 7; Nancy, 5; Judah, 2; and tiny Joseph, the foundling. When Rees and Lydia visit Maggie, she's obviously drunk; there's nothing in the house to eat; and she's apprenticed the precociously well-spoken Simon to neighboring farmer Tom Baker. In a community that's a law unto itself, however, Mouse doesn't have a leg to stand on legally, and the best Rees can do is to smooth the waters and ingratiate himself with the locals and selectmen before he and Lydia head back home. No sooner have they set forth on their return, however, than they're recalled to Mount Unity by the news that Maggie has been found dead in an open grave, with Mouse the obvious suspect. It falls to Rees to pester her friends and neighbors with endless questions-one of them aptly compares him to "a biting flea"-until the truth about Maggie's tangled history finally emerges.An improbable opening gambit and the gathering revelations of even more improbable extramarital relations that abundantly justify Rees' verdict-"These incestuous small towns!"-make this the weakest of his three period adventures to date.

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June 1, 2014

Will Rees, an 18th-century itinerant weaver from Maine, returns in his third historical (after Death of a Dyer). This time he and Lydia help a Shaker friend in New York who has been accused of murder. Librarian Kuhns won the Minotaur Books/MWA First Crime Novel competition in 2011.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2014
A cry of help from a dear friend sends itinerant-weaver-turned-farmer Will Rees and his wife, Lydia, from Maine to the Shaker community of Mt. Unity, New York, in the winter of 1797. There Sister Hannah Moore, familiarly known as Mouse, is accused of kidnapping widow Maggie Whitney's young children when Mouse seeks to rescue them from their alcoholic mother's neglect. Then when Maggie is found dead in an open grave, Mouse becomes the prime suspect. With his detecting background, Rees assists the local constable in investigating the murder of Maggie, a poor woman who risked being warned out of her community. Rees believes two succeeding murders are related to Maggie's, as he puts himself at risk and exposes small-town secrets, meanwhile bonding with the Whitney children and regretting missing much of his own son's childhood. The third in this series (after Death of a Dyer, 2013) is notable for developing the characters of Will and Lydia, whose personal lives take a turn in the closing pages. Another eminently readable historical mystery, set in the post-Revolutionary years, from librarian Kuhns.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)