Comes a Time for Burning (Dr. Thomas Parks )
Havill, author of the Posadas County mysteries, also writes a series of historical novels set in 1890s Washington State and featuring young Dr. Thomas Parks, a transplanted city boy with a new practice—and a new family—in a somnolent logging village. In this second in the series, we tag along with Doc Parks for 100 pages or so as he copes with the damages that lumberjack jobs and macho games do to young men. Suddenly he’s examining a very sick young woman. Bad seafood? No, cholera. The epidemic is on, with its origin providing the book’s only mystery. Some readers might balk at the stock characters: idealistic doctor, noble wife, sardonic sidekick, really hateful bad guy. A reverend! But historical fiction at its best can show long-gone events happening in a dynamic manner, and that’s just what Havill does in this vivid portrait of a town in crisis. Havill’s prose makes it a sensory experience: the taste of fresh coffee and jam on toast balanced by the smell of raw carbolic and burning sulphur. And much worse. The last decade of the nineteenth-century has its fans. This is for them. --Don Crinklaw--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.