Thursday, March 14, 2019

The Widows by Jess Montgomery


First Line: A hawk soars over Devil's Backbone.

Kinship, Ohio, 1924. When Sheriff Daniel Ross is killed while transporting a prisoner, his wife Lily vows to get to the bottom of it all. You see, things about her husband's death just aren't adding up. Fortunately, she's been named interim sheriff which should help her investigation.

Hours after the funeral, Marvena Whitcomb appears at Lily's door. A coal miner's widow, she doesn't know Daniel is dead and wants to know if he's found out anything about her missing daughter.

Amidst all the danger involved with attempts to unionize the local coal mine, the two widows find themselves joining forces to find out what happened to Marvena's daughter and to Daniel. The only trouble is, the more they investigate, the more they realize that Daniel really wasn't the man either of them thought he was-- and his murder is far from simple. Both women are widows. Both women have young children. Both are going to have to tread very carefully to find the truth.

I have to say that I was captivated by The Widows from the minute I began reading, and it does have a lot to do with my own personal experience. My mother was a widow (wife at eighteen, mother at nineteen, widow at twenty), so I know how tough and protective women on their own can be. Secondly, I come from a small farm town that used to be a mining town. On Christmas Eve 1932, methane gas built up in the mine, the barometric pressure dropped, the man who was going to be Santa that night at the community center flipped the switch to the lights down in the mine, and... no more mine. Fifty-four men died that day. Several sets of fathers and sons, brothers, uncles... My mother grew up with those men's children. Why am I yammering on about this? Because in those first few pages of The Widows when the methane gas begins to build in the coal mine known as The Widowmaker outside Kinship, chills ran up my spine. A connection was formed right then and there that never wavered throughout Montgomery's story.

The setting is pitch perfect, and the characters of Lily and Marvena are wonderful and completely capable of surprising everyone with just what they can do and how they can figure things out. They aren't just trying to find a killer. Lily, in particular, is also dealing with an extremely volatile situation concerning the mine owner who wants unionizers kept off his property, and to top it all off, the Volstead Act means that she's got to take care of moonshiners, too.

The excellent characterization also extends to Daniel, who moves from being a caricature of the heroic sheriff to being much more sharply delineated and "human." There's even a bad guy named Vogel who's so scary that if I were to turn around and find him standing behind me, I'd probably shatter into a million pieces.

In reading The Widows, you can learn about the dangers of being a miner and the importance of unions, you're treated to some excellent characters and one fine, twisty mystery that I loved even if I did figure out the identity of the spider at the center of the web early on. I can't tell you how happy I was when I learned that this is the first book in a series. I can't wait to get back to Kinship, Ohio, to be with Lily and Marvena again!


The Widows by Jess Montgomery
eISBN: 9781250184535
Minotaur Books © 2019
eBook, 328 pages

Historical Mystery, #1 Kinship mystery
Rating: A+
Source: Purchased from Amazon.


 

10 comments:

  1. This one sounds like a very evocative story, Cathy. I do like it when historical novels share a sense of place and time, as well as tell a story. And you have an especially interesting and powerful connection to this one. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

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    1. I did more than enjoy it. I think I lived it while I was reading.

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  2. How amazing the connections you made with this book and your own life! I can see why it grabbed you right away. When I first read about this book, I thought it was quite interesting that the sheriff's widow was asked to be the interim sheriff. Seems odd for women's roles at that time, but maybe not. Did the book address that at all? I'll be watching for this one at my library.

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    1. Yes, the book does address that, and the story itself is based, in part, on the life of the first female sheriff in Ohio. As for the book itself, it's pretty clear that Lily was given the job because those stupid men thought she'd be too weak-kneed and grief-stricken to really do anything as sheriff. *snort*

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  3. I am currently reading this book and am about half way through it. Interested in seeing how the relationship is developed between Lily and Marvena. When I read past history, even if it is historical fiction, I think "Now those are real problems." Whether it is a dust storm on the plains or extreme poverty of the coal miners widows. I have a respect for those who endured the hard times and they were truly hard. Some of our problems seem almost trivial. Interesting about the Pinkertons.

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    1. Yes, so many of our own problems seem very trivial after reading history. I remember reading the pittances all the widows in my hometown received as pensions that they were supposed to raise large broods of children with. They did. And for the most part, they paid their bills on time. (It was the rich folk in town who were late on payment.)

      I'd read books featuring the Pinkertons before. They have a very checkered history. Some hailed them as heroes; others as you see in THE WIDOWS.

      For most of the book, Lily and Marvena circle each other like a couple of stiff-tailed cats, don't they?

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  4. Wow, that is quite a connection. I have requested it at the library, great review!

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  5. Yippee. You loved it as much as I did. And a friend, a former union organizer, loved it, too.
    My father was a union organizer for several years and he worked for a time for a mine workers union in Chicago. So I was brought up with a strong union family and influence.
    We sang union songs and pro-miner folk songs.
    And if you want to see strong women, see the film made in the 1950s called, "Salt of the Earth," about striking miners and their incredible strong, fierce spouses who go to jail. It's a great film.
    I also am happy to see Jess Montgomery will keep writing. I hope Marvena is included, but I'm worried it'll just be about Lily and her adventures as sheriff.
    I have to tell more friends about it.

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    1. Yes, I hope Marvena continues to have her say in future books, too. And as for The Widows? I recommended it to several people at The Poisoned Pen Thursday night. Even pointed at the book on the shelf. *wink*

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