The Bone Garden: A Novel
by Tess Gerritsen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tess GerritsenEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-07-29
ISBN: 0345497619
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of The Bone Garden: A Novel
Book Review: A trip outside her normal genre, and a very good one
Summary: 5 Stars
Tess Gerritsen generally stays in the modern world when she writes, and does so very well indeed. This time, however, she journeys into the past, into a time when women were viewed as barely human and although doctors were considered to dwell in America's middle or upper classes socially, medical students were often suspected of robbing graves or committing pagan rituals with bodies of the dead in order to learn their profession. They were generally regarded with dislike, if not outright loathing. Medicine itself was stuck in the past, still adhering to the humoristic principles of disease established by Hippocrates of Ancient Greece and expounded on by the Rome's 2nd century physician Claudius Galen. To doctors of that era, all illness was the result of an imbalance in the body's four ''humors'', and the only way to bring them back into balance and thus provide a cure, was to bleed the patient. The germ theory of disease was a good 50 years in the future and the thought of illnesses being transmitted by lack of cleanliness or via a physician's germ-ridden hands was scoffed at.
Monitored by a devoted pair of modern history buffs, we are transferred into this world via a series of letters written by O.W.Holmes in which he has recorded a heart-rending story redolent of a true Shakespearean tragedy. The story begins in the present but within a few dozen pages one finds oneself conveyed into a squalid, corrupt American past wherein an unfortunate young woman, an Irish immigrant, who watches her sister die in childbirth and having taken her niece from that deathbed, finds herself alone in an unbelievably filthy, decaying world of the poor, harassed by a vicious, grasping brother-in-law and hounded by a stupid and callous member of the local watch who has a virulent hatred of Irish immigrants and whose detecting abilities exist only in his own venomous fantasy.
As if this were not enough to chill anyone's imagination, into this world steps a death-dealing monstrosity who appears to those who've seen it as a dragon-winged, white-faced abomination that seems to kill without reason or mercy, but with the skill of a surgeon - or a medical student.
I do not wish to present the reader of this review with any more information. This is a story that deserves to be read with care. Tess Gerritsen has written with a style and depth of feeling that people of all ages should experience, if for no other reason than to become aware of how fortunate we are to be living today, rather than in the America of the early 19th century.
The ''Good Old Days'' were not really very good after all....
Summary of The Bone Garden: A Novel
Unknown bones, untold secrets, and unsolved crimes from the distant past cast ominous shadows on the present in the dazzling new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen.Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil?human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. But whoever this nameless woman was, and whatever befell her, is knowledge lost to another time. . . .
Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, Norris Marshall, a talented but penniless student at Boston Medical College, has joined the ranks of local ?resurrectionists??those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. Yet even this ghoulish commerce pales beside the shocking murder of a nurse found mutilated on the university hospital grounds. And when a distinguished doctor meets the same grisly fate, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.
To prove his innocence, Norris must track down the only witness to have glimpsed the killer: Rose Connolly, a beautiful seamstress from the Boston slums who fears she may be the next victim. Joined by a sardonic, keenly intelligent young man named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Norris and Rose comb the city?from its grim cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and centers of Brahmin power?on the trail of a maniacal fiend who lurks where least expected . . . and who waits for his next lethal opportunity.
With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, The Bone Garden deftly interweaves the thrilling narratives of its nineteenth- and twenty-first century protagonists, tracing the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking. Bold, bloody, and brilliant, this is Tess Gerritsen?s finest achievement to date.
"An old mystery is crossed with a modern story in the latest from Gerritsen (The Mephisto Club, 2006, etc.).Julia Hamill, newly divorced and still smarting, purchases an old house outside Boston. Determined to dig a garden, she instead finds the bones of a long-dead woman?the apparent victim of murder?which starts her on a journey to ferret out the story behind her death. Julia connects with Henry, a no-nonsense 89-year-old with boxes of documents that once belonged to the now-deceased previous owner of Julia?s home. The two discover a mystery dating back to the 1830s. At the heart of it is a baby named Meggie, born to the beautiful but doomed Irish chambermaid, Aurnia. Married to a man who cares nothing for her, Aurnia lays dying in a maternity ward with her sister, Rose, at her side. Rose, a spirited 17-year-old, takes Meggie to protect her from Aurnia?s husband, but soon finds herself the target of a bizarre manhunt. Someone is after the child?and Rose, as well, because she witnessed a horrifying murder. The body count piles up as Rose struggles to remain free of those who would take Meggie from her. Meanwhile, a young medical student becomes the chief suspect of the West End Reaper killings when he stumbles onto another terrible homicide. Although he fights the prospect, eventually he and Rose join forces to solve the murders and protect the baby at the heart of the mysterious deaths. Readers with delicate stomachs may find Gerritsen?s graphic descriptions of corpse dissection hard to take, but the story, which digs up a dark Boston of times long past, entices readers to keep turning pages long after their bedtimes."
- Kirkus Reviews (starred)
From the Hardcover edition.
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