Marine archaeologist Rachel Gardener is thrilled to be summoned to the coast of Cumbria to investigate a newly discovered shipwreck. She is also relieved to escape the tensions of her troubled marriage, and to be closer to her ailing mother. Yet the past rises up and confronts Rachel, as seeing her mother surfaces hidden childhood hurts. When the mysteriously sunken ship is discovered to be a … slaving ship from the 1700s, Rachel is determined to explore the town of Whitehaven’s link to the slave trade. Soon she learns of Abigail Fenton, the young wife of a slave trader, who has a surprising secret of her own, lost to the ages. The more Rachel learns about Abigail, the more she wonders if the past can inform the present… Perhaps Rachel can learn from Abigail and break free from her troubled history, and embrace the future she longs to claim for her own?
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Some novels are forgettable. The Widow’s Secret is not. The Widow’s Secret is a unique dual timeline story set in Whitehaven, a small village in northern England. The present story is about marine archaeologist Rachel Gardener, who tends to place her career ahead of her relationship with her husband, to his annoyance. The past story is about Abigail, the wife of an eighteenth-century maritime trader.
A good dual-timeline story always has a clear relationship between the past and the present story. With The Widow’s Secret, it doesn’t take long to work out that the link must be the ship Rachel is investigating, given that Abigail’s husband was a ship’s captain. We watch Rachel discover aspects of Abigail’s story in the present, then see more of Abigail’s life in the past story.
Abigail is definitely the heroine in this story. Her prospects for making a good marriage are rapidly declining when she meets Mr Fenton, a newcomer to their village. He is a ship owner, a man with excellent prospects, and she is delighted to marry him. Her delight is tempered when she is unable to present him with a son. He gifts her a slave, a young girl, which raises more discord in their marriage.
As Abigail’s circumstances change, she has to reconsider everything she was raised to believe. And that’s what makes her a brilliant character. She’s not content to believe what everyone around her believes. Instead, she makes her own decisions based on Christian values. And that includes some tough decisions.
As the news is constantly reminding us, the USA is still suffering the aftereffects of slavery. What’s less well-known is the role of the English in the slave trade. The Widow’s Secret is an outstanding novel that shows the power of looking beneath our obvious differences to our underlying humanity.
Recommended. Thanks to Lion Publishing and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.
THE WIDOW’S SECRET by Katharine Swartz is a well-written novel that is told using a dual timeline, focusing on the points of view of the two main characters in each time period. Rachel is a marine archaeologist investigating a shipwreck from the 1700s and the mystery of why and how it got to be in the harbor. This provides a backdrop for Rachel’s journey of self-discovery and understanding why her relationship with her husband and her Mom is not what she wishes it to be. At the same time, Swartz weaves in the story of Abigail Fenton, wife of the slave trader whose ship Rachel is researching, and her evolution into the woman she was proud to be.
Swartz does an excellent job of creating a story that was interesting and kept me invested in both characters and their evolution. I also enjoyed learning more about a part of England’s history that I was unfamiliar with.
Swartz’s novels never disappoint! She always gives her readers stories full of heart and emotion that resonate and stay long after the book ends. I highly recommend this one.
Thanks to the Publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this novel. All opinions are my own.
#TheWidowsSecret #LionFiction #KatharineSwartz
I received a free electronic ARC of this historical/modern novel from Netgalley, Katharine Swartz, and Lion Fiction publishers. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I had not been previously exposed to this author, mentally grouping her in with modern romance tales, so I thank you, Netgalley, for introducing me to her excellent historical facets.
I am pleased to recommend her to friends and family and look very much forward to reading “The Emigrants Trilogy”, written with Kate Hewitt and currently available on Kindle Unlimited.
Our tale comes to us in the voices of two protagonists, in two different time frames. Sounds complicated, but very well done and easy to follow. We see 1760’s Whitehaven through the eyes of Abigail Heywood Fenton. Whitehaven is an Irish Seaport, Copeland district, the administrative county of Cumbria. With the rapid increase of American trade, Cumbria is slowly dwindling as a shipping city, as ships putting out of Glasgow, Scotland had the trade winds in their favor, winds that cut fully twenty days off of the trip to the Americas.
Abigail’s new husband James Fenton is the proud owner of two sailing ships, ‘The Pearl’ and a second ship currently being built in Whitehaven. ‘The Fair Lady’, will be named for Abigail. The post-wedding trip of ‘The Pearl’ was disappointing, as American tobacco growers had pre-sold their crops to a single entity. The Pearl sailed into Whitehaven a year after their marriage, carrying only a few sacks of rice and bundles of furs, minus the money crop James was counting on to set himself up as a successful trader and solidify his new family into the middle class. James then sent ‘The Pearl’ south to join the lucrative triangle of many successful Irish shippers, traveling Whitehaven to the African Coast carrying trinkets and merchandise to barter for slaves, then carrying slaves to the West Indies and southern Gulf Coast, returning to Whitehaven with sugar, rum, and spices. Or so he hopes.
Through the eyes of Rachael Gardener, a marine archeologist working for Bristol’s ‘Center for Maritime Archaeology’, we view modern Cumbria. Rachael grew up in Cumbria but is estranged from her mother. She will, however, take on the job at Whitehaven and make the time to touch base with her mom. A mining company, looking to expand their diggings, has pulled up obvious signs of an ancient shipwreck in the clay sample from their test drill a quarter of a mile off the coast of Whitehaven. Because it is a commercial request time is tight, so Rachael intends to leave right away, something her husband Anthony doesn’t understand or care for. Not sure how to breach the ever-growing distance between them, Rachael heads down the coast with a heavy heart.
A lot depends on Rachael’s findings on the old shipwreck. Fairly close to shore, it is not in the area of huge rocks further out in the bay where so many shipwrecks lie, and the iron piece found in the drill core could be a part of the equipment used on slave-carrying ships. If it was a slaver, there have been so few found sunken that it would be considered a historical site to be fully explored, as very few have ever been discovered. If it was simply a merchant ship, despite its age, the mining company would be able to continue its plans to expand the mine, destroying the shipwreck site in the process.
And too, Rachael has personal problems to sort out while she is in Cumbria. Her relationships with both her mother and her husband are in jeopardy. She must find a way to breach the silence between them, to salvage her relationships with the two most important people in her world. Or face the prospect to continuing on, all alone…