Blood Red Roses [Hardcover]

Margaret Lawrence (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1997

From the author of Hearts and Bones--nominated for the 1997 Edgar and Agatha Awards--comes a new novel featuring the unforgettable Hannah Trevor. A sequence of gruesome murders in her colonial town is the least concern of Hannah, whose eight-year-old daughter may be sold as an indentured servant. But when Hannah becomes a suspect in the deaths, she must clear herself and unravel the truth.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Margaret Lawrence's second mystery about Hannah Trevor, a smart, determined midwife living in a Maine town just after the Revolutionary War, is as good as her first, the stunningly evocative Hearts and Bones. As before, Hannah is a woman with many talents, living in a period that undervalues them. But Lawrence doesn't hammer away at this unfortunate reality, and the subtle power of her writing lets us understand the landscape in its own social frame, as in this description of a madwoman thinking about her dead husband: "He had been sweet and fond and his passion amazed her, for she had not thought herself a thing that any man could want. But she knew he did not really see her, how the dark, silent birds of rage dived and struck at her ..."

From Library Journal

Eighteenth-century midwife Hannah Trevor, who gave birth to her deaf daughter some ten months after her husband, a British sympathizer, left town, struggles to make ends meet in Rufford, Maine. Amid unrest due to heavy taxation, Hannah and others?including her married lover?discover a murder victim who turns out to be her long-thought-dead husband. Suspicion naturally falls on Hannah, already faced with losing her daughter to the courts. The author of Hearts and Bones (LJ 8/96), a 1997 Edgar nominee, offers an in-depth look at post-Revolutionary America, told with passion, empathy, and gifted writing?a truly marvelous piece of work.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 353 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st. ed edition (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380973529
• ISBN-13: 978-0380973521
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,831,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read..., July 13, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blood Red Roses (Mass Market Paperback)

This wonderful book, the second in a series about Hannah Trevor a midwife in Colonial America, is a must read for all lovers of history and/or mystery. Margaret Lawrence is a talented author who has obviously done a great deal of research about Colonial America and it's inhabitants. After reading this book and Blood Read Roses, I became very grateful to be a woman of the 20th century!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even Better than Hearts and Bones, June 7, 2000

By 

drdebs (CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Red Roses (Mass Market Paperback)

Since there's no 5+ button, I have to type out how wonderful I think this book is. I was hooked on Hannah Trevor, the Maine midwife in post-revolutionary times, after the first book, Hearts and Bones. Not only did Margaret Lawrence capture with compassion and accuracy the life experiences of a midwife in the wilderness, she managed to construct a fairly suspenseful mystery. While Hearts and Bones was as good as any Anne Perry novel, Blood Red Roses is simply magnificent in plot, detail, and narrative.

In this second book Hannah discovers the fate of the husband she has long thought dead. This brings her into the eye of the storm in Rufford, and the simmering animosities of the community are directed at her. There are also developments in the life of her deaf and mute daughter Jennet, and in her passion for Ralph Josselin, a married landowner. For anyone who has ever loved deeply this book is just riveting since you can feel Hannah's bottled-up feelings bursting from every page. A taut, satisfying, and mystifying sequel.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 4.5 stars for lovely writing and fast paced plot, November 16, 2005

By 

Lilly Flora "by Lilo Drandoff" (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blood Red Roses (Mass Market Paperback)

I was surprised by Blood Red Roses. I had like Hearts and Bones, but found the story frequently overshadowed by the lyrical quality of the authors writing. While this does tend to still occur in Blood Red Roses, it's on a much lesser scale and so I was able to appreciate the story more.

Hanna Trevor, midwife in Rufford Maine has believed her husband to be dead for months when a series of murders occurs in her town in the midsts of summer. Her supposedly dead husbands' body, along with that of his new wife and children, is found the night of the harvest festival. Hanna is immediately a suspect, as a footprint left in blood shows the killer to be female.

Of course Hanna didn't do it. We know this because some chapters in this book, as in the previous, are devoted to the murderer's perspective. (This is a great writing style for mystery books.) The story in this book is fascinating and augmented by Hannah being called before an orphan master's court to prove she can provide for her child, who is also the illegitimate daughter of her lover Daniel (note: the love story in this book is very sweet and tender.)

I liked this book a lot and would recommend it highly. Be warned though, like the first book in this series it is quite dark. Insane people seem to crop frequently in these books and the way they're insanity is described is both horrifying and very accurate. In fact, I've never seen mental distress portrayed so well in writing before.

I rank this a sold 4.5 stars.