Eliza
is actually fortunate to work for Mrs. Parks who screens all potential clients
and hires a bodyguard to protect her working girls. Many women of that time
could not survive without a husband, but Eliza is able to attain financial
security and even a certain satisfaction with her work as her clients are as
varied as young boys being treated by their fathers, to lonesome sailors, to prominent
citizens.
When
out riding horses one day, 20-year-old Eliza and her friend Jean stumble upon a
body. On another ride, the young women discover yet another body of a woman;
this one Eliza identifies as Mary who disappeared from Mrs. Parks’ brothel. Mrs.
Parks shares that information with the sheriff repeatedly, but other than
removing the remains, he is not interested in the killer.
Inspired
by short stories about C. Auguste Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe’s famous fictional
character, Eliza and Jean try using Dupin’s train of thought technique to solve
the mystery of the women’s deaths. Putting together the clues they gathered;
Eliza strives to discover the identity of the killer by putting herself in harm’s
way. What if her sleuthing actually makes her the next corpse?
Jane Smiley has a fondness for
horses, and she works several into this work of historical fiction. Smiley won the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for A Thousand Acres, a story based
on William Shakespeare's King Lear; Hollywood adapted the book into a movie
starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange.
My review
will be posted on Goodreads starting October 27, 2022.
I would like
to thank Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor as well as NetGalley for
providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.
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