Review: Killing Gifts

In the late Eighteenth Century in Manchester, England, a small group of worshipers splintered off from the Quaker community. Viewed as radical for their professed communion with the dead and the ecstatic shaking that was a ritualistic part of their worship services, they became know as the Shaking Quakers and later, just Shakers. Led by “mother” Ann Lee, the Shakers emigrated to the newly born country of the United States. It was a time when America was swept by a wave of religious revivalism and experimentation with social and communal living. The Shakers absorbed some of these groups after establishing themselves in New England. Later, during another revival in the middle west the Shakers established new colonies that lasted into the middle years of the nineteenth century, but the Civil War largely put an end to most such experimentation.

In the twentieth Century, New Brighton resident Deborah Woodworth became interested in the abandoned Shaker communities of northern Kentucky and southern Ohio near where she grew up. After years of research during which she achieved a Ph.D. in Sociology, Woodworth turned to crime writing. What better context in which to plumb the criminal mind and motivation than the Shaker communities which had drawn her attention as a young person? What better era for a setting than the great depression of the nineteen-thirties, a time of trouble, tension and turmoil?

Shakers, espousing celibacy and a simple cooperative life, were well-placed to withstand the rigors of frontier life and the depressions that swept the land. Shakers were sometimes viewed with suspicion by elements of the population, all the moreso because their organization and simple needs, often left them better off during the hard times of the 1930’s.

All these elements are carefully blended into her stories by author Woodworth as she crafts her tales of murder. By the Twentieth Century, the Shaker movement, still revered for its excellent crafts and furniture, had dwindled, as have many other social experiments and movements, to one or two small communities. If the author of four previous novels has her way, the Shakers will also be remembered for eldress Sister Rose Callahan, an unusual private detective.

Sister Rose is an interesting amalgam of the worldly with the almost ascetic religious life of the Shaker Community. In KILLING GIFTS, she is once more drawn into a dangerous situation, not only by her reputation as a problem solver, but by her persistent need to help others find salvation. In KILLING GIFTS, her quick inquisitive mind, and her strong administrative skills are be tested to their utmost. It is a time when Shakers were viewed with a mixture of envy and suspicion, and strong women everywhere faced many obstacles.

A telephone call comes to Rose Callahan in her Kentucky community of North Homage, located somewhere south of Cincinnati. The speaker is Eldress Fannie, from the Shaker community of Hancock village, in Massachusetts. A young girl of dubious reputation, taking shelter with the Shakers has been murdered in the Shaker community, and the leader fears the police are about to arrest a young novitiate. Eldress Fannie, facing the continued enmity of the local village and a dwindling community of Believers, is frantic for help. In twenty-first century language, she is in deep denial, unable to see how weakened the small group of Shakers has become and unwilling to admit to the possibility that anyone seeking entry in to the Shaker society could be guilty of such a crime as murder.

Reluctantly, Rose Callahan, traveling with a delightful female companion, Gennie Malone who is not a Shaker, takes the train to Hancock Village. Spring is almost on the land, but traveling to the cold wintry northern village in Massachusetts, Rose and Gennie begin to see from the windows of the train, the grip which winter still holds on the northern part of the country. Traveling by train is a rare occasion for both these women and Woodworth’s writing evokes the unusualness of the event. It is a measure of her meticulous research and careful plotting that the change in climate plays an important part in the story.

Readers will find KILLING GIFTS to be a well-written, satisfying story that illuminates with a kindly yet honest eye, the realities of Shaker existence in 1936 America and presents a logical, tidily expressed murder plot as well. Eldress Rose Callahan discovers in Hancock Village that she must stretch her skills to the limit to ease religious animosities and unmask a multiple murderer. It is a story with many surprising twists.

One might expect that writing about a dwindling, aging religious group that believes in celibacy and other radical tenets, might eventually present a dead end. The Shaker community, now in the Twenty-first Century has been reduced to less than a dozen true believers. Yet there have been some recent converts, and because good crime fiction is most often an examination and revelation of small elements of the human condition, one can confidently expect many more adventures with Sister Rose Callahan, always rooted in real humanity.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Carl Brookins - RAM

Book Review: Killing Gifts