Karen - reviewed on 1/3/2010 + 168 more book reviews

This is the very first audiobook that my husband would volunteer to let play while we were in a cross country road trip (he always thought it would be too distracting). Well, after he listened to it, he wanted more....
Julia Hamill has bought a house in rural Massachusetts. While she is digging in her yard to start a garden when she discovers the bones of a long-dead woman. The bones have been there for over 100 years. The bones start Julia on a journey to find out how the woman died and ended up in this grave in her backyard. Julia enlists the aid of Henry, an 89-year-old who has boxes of papers that once belonged to the previous owner of Julia's house. And so Julia discovers a mystery that dates back to the 1830s.
The story moves to Boston in 1830 which is an age of disease and pestilence. A time when doctors did not wash their hands between seeing patients so they unknowingly spread infections. This is the reason that many women at the time had excruiating deaths due childbed fever in the maternity wards. Norris Marshall is a a talented but poor student at Harvard Medical College. In order to pay for his education Norris steals bodies from the graveyards. Because of his seedy livelyhood, Norris becomes the prime suspect in a gruesome murder of a nurse. To prove his innocence, Norris must track down the only witness to have glimpsed the killer, Rose Connolly. They are joined by a young man named Oliver Wendell Holmes.
This really is a great story. I really enjoyed the story and the narrator. I don't think I was short changed because this is an abridged version of the original novel. After listening to it, my husband and I have read the rest of Tess Gerritsen's novels.

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