Blood Red Roses

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 ...