Book Review: The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen

The Bone Garden
Author: Tess Gerritsen
Publication: Ballantine Books (September 18, 2007)

Description: Unknown bones, untold secrets, and unsolved crimes from the distant past cast ominous shadows on the present in the dazzling new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen.

Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil–human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. But whoever this nameless woman was, and whatever befell her, is knowledge lost to another time.

Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, Norris Marshall, a talented but penniless student at Boston Medical College, has joined the ranks of local “resurrectionists”–those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. Yet even this ghoulish commerce pales beside the shocking murder of a nurse found mutilated on the university hospital grounds. And when a distinguished doctor meets the same grisly fate, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.

To prove his innocence, Norris must track down the only witness to have glimpsed the killer: Rose Connolly, a beautiful seamstress from the Boston slums who fears she may be the next victim. Joined by a sardonic, keenly intelligent young man named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Norris and Rose comb the city–from its grim cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and centers of Brahmin power–on the trail of a maniacal fiend who lurks where least expected . . . and who waits for his next lethal opportunity.

With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, The Bone Garden deftly interweaves the thrilling narratives of its nineteenth- and twenty-first century protagonists, tracing the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking. Bold, bloody, and brilliant, this is Tess Gerritsen’s finest achievement to date.

My Thoughts: This was an excellent thriller that combined the present day with events in 1830. Julia Hamill is recently divorced and has purchased a fixer-upper from 1880 despite objections from her sister. When digging in the yard to restore some gardens, Julia discovers a skull. Both the police and forensic anthropologists are called when it is determined that the body dates from the sometime around the 1830s. 

Julia wants to learn about this forgotten woman and is pleased when a relative of the former owner offers to let her dig through the many, many boxes of stuff he removed from the house when the former owner died at age 92.

Among the stuff in the boxes are some letters from Oliver Wendell Holmes which tell the story of those long ago events of 1830.

The second part of the book tells the story of a poor Irish girl, a poor farmer lad who yearns to be a doctor, and the West End Ripper. Rose watches her sister Aurnia die in the charity ward of a Boston hospital after giving birth to a daughter. Norris Marshall is a medical student who was there when his supervisor examined the sister. Rose is determined to care for the child despite the fact the Aurnia's abusive husband has tried to give her away. 

Then the deaths start, and rumors start of an unseen but frightening killer haunting the hospital. Rose and her infant niece seem to be targets of this killer. 

I really enjoyed the historical detail in this story. I also liked Julia who gains courage to take her own chance for love after learning Rose's story. 

I bought this one as a $1,99 BookBub deal. You can buy your copy here.