In a luminous and sensitive debut, Stacia M. Brown brings to life a love affair, a mystery and a murder trial, all set against the turbulent backdrop of Oliver Cromwell's England. It's 1649, shortly after Cromwell's army has seized control of the country and beheaded King Charles I. The realm is now under Puritan law, including one that states that any woman who secretly gives birth to an illegitimate child will be charged with murder and executed should the child be found dead. When glove-maker Rachel Lockyer's employer spies Rachel burying a dead newborn, she assumes the worst and reports Rachel to the authorities. So begins the unraveling of Rachel's mysterious past and the tale of her uncertain future.
Accused of infanticide in a legal system where the burden of proof rests on the defendant, Rachel's silence before investigator Thomas Bartwain only worsens her situation. While Bartwain cannot tell if Rachel is unwilling or unable to tell her story, the lack of evidence in her favor prevents him from releasing her. Rachel's public trial will draw in the people around her with cyclonic force, causing them to question the law and their own morals. Meanwhile, Rachel's history slowly unfolds through flashbacks to her ardent love affair with married political activist William Walwyn, juxtaposing the stolen happiness of her affair with the inhumane conditions in the women's ward at Newgate Prison. Brown also uses these sections to highlight Rachel's independent spirit and reveal her connections to the witnesses at her trial.
Accidents of Providence focuses on the common aspects between the British infant-murder laws and Puritan witch hunts. As Brown points out in an afterword, "Each reflected a shared Puritan concern with the damaging consequences of sin and the concealment of sin," and both primarily targeted women who lived on the fringes of their communities--an attempt to curtail the perceived threat such women posed to the moral fabric of society. Brown, drawing upon research she conducted from her dissertation on 17th-century martyrs, deftly evokes the double standards inherent in the infant-murder laws and the enormous difficulty any woman accused of the crime faced by allowing her characters to struggle with these issues, never resorting to preaching to make the point. While the dialogue occasionally feels too modern, Brown's spare, lyrical style delights, and the story's elements are nothing if not authentic. (Even the improbable ending takes its inspiration from an actual infant-murder case.)
With cross-genre appeal to fiction and mystery lovers alike, Accidents of Providence will leave readers moved and deeply aware of our society's progress in women's rights. --Jaclyn Fulwood
Shelf Talker: A single woman in 1649 Puritan England is accused of murdering her illegitimate child in this thought-provoking and romantic debut novel.