ABOUT THE BOOK

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?

Book: The Yellow Lantern Angie Dicken

Author: Angie Dicken

Genre: Christian Historical/Suspense

Release Date: August 2019

Click here to grab your copy.

MY BOOK REVIEW

"The Yellow Lantern" is a Christian historical crime novel that is part of the book series called "True Colors." It is the third book of the series. This is a fiction based on strange but true history. Angie Dicken takes us back to 1824 into the life of Josephine Clayton's life. She gets involved in body snatching in hopes of saving her father's life the debtors prison. A dead body on the black market was worth a ton of money. Doctors wanted to these bodies to experiment and learn more about the body and how it worked when it comes to different medical diseases that caused the person's death. We see the struggle of her not wanting to steal dead bodies. Josephine finds herself a part of this practice after being taken for dead and ending up on the table of her employer, Dr. Chadwick. 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. Unfortunately, she got herself into a deep map of deception. She starts working with Braham Taylor's at his cotton mill as a cover for her secret mission. We learn about Braham's family struggles. Alvin took the role of being a repentant sinner.

The romance in "The Yellow Lantern" has a slow build between Josie and Braham. We see them go from distrust to admiration. There were some intense moments as well as some sweet ones too. She gets stuck between two men -- one whom she'd loved all her life and the other who stirred something inside her she'd never felt before.

This is one of my first books I read from Angie Dicken. This book isn't a quick read. Each page is full of in-depth details and information making it hard to be a quick read. You really need to take your time. Dicken's did a wonderful job making personable characters. Each character is trying to overcome problems from their past. There is just enough about faith and romance throughout the book helping to break up the horrors of the body stealing crimes. You can tell Dickens did her research. Reading about young girls and women working long hours, 14 hours a day, in the mill with such poor circumstance. You can picture vividly the sounds, seeing the steam from the machines and Liesel the bobbin girl sitting against the wall with her basket. There are many topics in this book, including, grave robbing, medical advancement, trust, and faith.

I highly recommend reading "The Yellow Lantern". It is a heavy story, but it a fascinating story.

I received this book from the publishing house and was under no obligation to write a review.

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.

Twitter: @AngieDicken

Facebook: Click Here

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 19th 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.

GIVEAWAY