OLD GRIMES IS DEAD

The award-winning McFadden tells a tale of grave robbery, the Underground Railroad, and more in a historical novel set in Western Pennsylvania.

It’s 1857 in Hartsgrove, Pennsylvania, and four doctors and a druggist exhume—“resurrect” in the parlance of the era—the body of recently deceased Black man Fudge Van Pelt in order to further their studies in anatomy. This is illegal, and things heat up when a skinned corpse turns up. Another eerie grave-digging episode involves Dr. William Darling, mentored by the old Dr. Cyrus Vasbinder, and two of the co-conspirators who dug up Van Pelt. Will is an earnest young man, and when his patient, little Molly Plotner, goes from near death to robust health and then, supposedly, to death, Will is flummoxed. He and his friends hope to dig up Molly’s body to see if an autopsy will yield answers, but they find an empty coffin. Against this backdrop, the plot goes galloping off, with a dramatic trial, a jail escape, the blossoming of love between Will and the spirited Kathleen O’Hanlon, and a tragic Underground Railroad escapade. The conclusion is both shocking and weirdly believable and satisfying, as befits an author who has earned multiple honors for his work, which was included in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021. Memorable characters include the kindly but compromised Dr. Cyrus Vasbinder; the bloviating politician Levi Smathers; Henry Westerman, a free Black man known as Black Hen; and the mysterious Augustus Hamilton, who claims to be free but may or may not be. The tremulous desire of old Black Hen for the widow Van Pelt is deeply touching. A wonderful writer, McFadden has a poet’s way with words: “Fudge wore his worry like a necktie”; “[Will] was a free man, shackled to his fears”; “a sleep of refuge more than restoration.” His thoroughly engrossing book seamlessly weaves humor and sadness, wit and tragedy, fear and love.

An exceptional plot and characters make this historical novel a keeper.