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A review by blodeuedd
Speakers of the Dead: A Walt Whitman Mystery by J. Aaron Sanders
3.0
I do not know a lot about Walt Whitman, poet, American, and then my knowledge ends. Sorry Walt, but you might have been mentioned or not. All I remember from that poetry class I took is Rochester, and my lovely WW1 poets. But never mind that! In this fictional story that blends fact with fiction we get to see him when he was a journalist and struggling writer, and not the famous man he will be later on.
New York, the 1840s. A time of immigration, cholera, a police force not always doing police work, a time of lynch mobs (those are so scary). Not a time of justice.
What we then get in this book is a mystery, Walt's friend is hanged for the murder of her husband. He refuses to believe it (and she is obviously framed is my first thought too.) He tries to get to the bottom of this and believes it has to do with the corpse business. Medical school needs corpses, corpses are dug up from graves. A nasty business.
Then we also have the Women's Medical school where it all happened, and the struggles women went through to be taken seriously. A woman doctor, madness!
It all blends together in a well written interesting historical mystery. A great era. A dangerous era for asking questions. But Walt was never afraid of getting to the truth of things.
New York, the 1840s. A time of immigration, cholera, a police force not always doing police work, a time of lynch mobs (those are so scary). Not a time of justice.
What we then get in this book is a mystery, Walt's friend is hanged for the murder of her husband. He refuses to believe it (and she is obviously framed is my first thought too.) He tries to get to the bottom of this and believes it has to do with the corpse business. Medical school needs corpses, corpses are dug up from graves. A nasty business.
Then we also have the Women's Medical school where it all happened, and the struggles women went through to be taken seriously. A woman doctor, madness!
It all blends together in a well written interesting historical mystery. A great era. A dangerous era for asking questions. But Walt was never afraid of getting to the truth of things.