About the Book

Book: The Yellow Lantern

Author: Angie Dicken

Genre: Christian Historical/Suspense

Release Date: August, 2019

Josephine Is Forced to Spy for Grave Robbers
Step into True Colors—a new series of Historical Stories of Romance and American Crime

In Massachusetts in 1824, Josephine Clayton awakes on the table of the doctor she’s assisted all these months. She was presumed dead by all and has become the doctor’s next corpse for his medical research. Frightened, the doctor tries to kill her, but Josephine begs to be spared. A deal is struck—Josie will leave her village and work at a distant cotton mill. All the while, she’ll await her true mission—posing as a mourner to help his body snatcher procure her replacement. At the mill though, Josie is praised for her medical remedies among the mill girls, gaining attention from the handsome factory manager Braham Taylor. Yet, when Braham’s own loved one becomes the prey for the next grave robbing, Josie must make a choice that could put her dark past behind her or steal away the promise of any future at all.

What price will Josie pay for love when her secrets begin to unravel?

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About the Author

Angie Dicken credits her love of story to reading British literature during life as a military kid in England. Now living in the U.S. heartland, she’s a member of ACFW, sharing about author life with her fellow Alley Cats on The Writer’s Alley blog and Facebook page. Besides writing, she is a busy mom of four and works in Adult Ministry. Angie enjoys eclectic new restaurants, authentic conversation with friends, and date nights with her Texas Aggie husband. Connect with her online at www.angiedicken.com.

More from Angie

Barbour’s True Colors Crime concept intrigued me from the very beginning. Being the daughter of a doctor and discovering the ties of grave robbing to the early medical profession, I was excited to dive deep into 19^th century Massachusetts. Grave robbing around Boston and New York was often employed by doctors desperate for medical advancement. Men and women were both involved in the procuring of bodies for doctors. Finding these accounts led me to take took a look at the current medical remedies of the time—tinctures, elixirs, and herbal concoctions. My heroine was created in the tension of a desire to heal and the desperation of medical pursuits.

Amidst these medical ties to the historical moment of 1824, something was also shifting among women in rural areas of New England. Many women were employed by newly built cotton mills (Lowell Mill was my inspiration for the fictional Gloughton Mill in The Yellow Lantern). These working opportunities for women offered an escape from their home-bound lives and the rare chance for independence. Of course, with such industrial environments, injuries, and sometimes death, would occur. Noting the accounts of these kind of fatalities in historical articles, my research came full circle.

I found three strong threads to weave into my grave-robbing story—desperate doctors in need of research, a doctor’s assistant needing an escape from her village, and a mill, not only offering that escape, but the chance at bodies for the desperate medical community.

My heroine, Josie Clay, found life in the tangle of these threads of mills, medicine, and grave robbing—all playing out within the pages of The Yellow Lantern.

My Review

When Barbour introduced the True Colors series, I was immediately intrigued. True crime is an interesting genre, and one that I have both read about and watched documentaries about over the years. Having a basis of factual information, this subject tends toward more neutral ground with regard to narrative voice and presentation, and part of what makes True Colors so unique is the Christian aspect. The characters and precise situations are fictional, but the crimes themselves actually happened, and the merging of sordid history and Christian perspective offers a different angle and a novel approach. This has become my favorite Barbour series, with Daughters of the Mayflower a close second.

“Heaven stank of tallow and shone a honey glow.” From that inimitable first line, Angie Dicken’s “The Yellow Lantern” shoots out of the gate and doesn’t relent until the final page. There is no easing into the plot; rather, readers find themselves thrust headlong into a nightmare situation straight from the nineteenth century. Being buried alive was a legitimate concern in the years before modern technology and an increasing understanding of the human body, and in this age of nascent medical knowledge, doctors needed fresh bodies to advance their studies—bodies supplied to them by aptly-named body snatchers. In 1824 Massachusetts, Josephine Clayton unwittingly finds herself a part of this practice after being quite literally taken for dead and buried and ending up on the table of her employer, Dr. Chadwick. In order to save her own life, she must agree to go to work at a factory mill and pose as a mourner to signal a body snatcher to obtain her replacement. However, her circumstances become more convoluted as she finds herself drawn more deeply into a web of deception.

“The Yellow Lantern” sets forth a plausible scenario in which Christian, good-hearted people may become ensnared in conspiracies and duplicitous dealings. Josie experiences remorse and a stinging conscience as events escalate: “No matter if she played the part of a mill girl, she could not ignore the tangled thread of deceit that wrapped around her soul as tightly as the cotton on the bobbins”. Her proficiency as an herbal healer conflicts with the job she is to perform, as does a budding romance. The description of the cotton mill, with motes and dust thick in the air and obscuring the windows, is eye-opening, as is the lack of recourse for those without positions of authority and prestige in society. Not knowing whom to trust adds to the suspense, creating a sinister, murky atmosphere and making this a very difficult book to put down. Fans of true crime, factory life, nineteenth century customs, and romance will not want to miss out on this illuminating book!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishing and CelebrateLit and was under no obligation to post a review.