Amanda Flower's Because I Could Not Stop For Death

 

 

 

By Margaret S. Hamilton

 

Amanda Flower’s historical mystery featuring the poet Emily Dickinson is the first in a proposed series. The book takes place in winter and spring, 1855, and is set in two locations, the Dickinson family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, and at a hotel in Washington, D.C., when Emily, her mother, and sister Lavinia visit Emily’s congressman father while Congress is in session.

 

The book is narrated by the household second maid, Willa Noble, an intelligent, diligent, and educated older teen, who is the guardian of her younger brother, Henry. Emily is twenty-four, an avid gardener and poetry writer, usually accompanied by her Newfoundland dog, Carlo. Emily selects Willa as the new family maid. Willa soon becomes Emily’s companion, and while solving the death of Henry, her confidant.

 

Willa’s narrative tone is perfect, walking a narrow line between mid-nineteenth century colloquial speech and modern English. Flower distills a veritable mountain of research into the sensory details of Amherst in the middle of winter, and then the hustle-bustle of Washington, D.C., as spring emerges.

 

Emily is not yet a recluse. In the book, Flower lays the fictional groundwork for her later poems. Emily is bright, well-educated, enjoys a correspondence with friends and relatives, and is an advocate for justice. When Willa is devastated by the death of her younger brother, Emily pounces on the uncertainty surrounding the events of Henry’s death. With Willa and Carlo at her side, Emily launches an investigation which leads to identifying the true culprit.

 

Flower focuses on three elements of Amherst society: class, status, and politics. Emily has enjoyed the best education offered to young women in the mid-nineteenth century, including attending what would become Mount Holyoke College. Mr. Dickinson is a prosperous lawyer in Amherst and a Whig representative in Congress. Emily’s brother, Austin, is a Harvard-trained lawyer, engaged to Emily’s best friend, Susan Gilbert.

 

In 1855, the Whig party is neither pro-slavery nor anti-slavery. Henry’s death is connected to the actions of local citizens assisting slaves fleeing north on the Underground Railroad. Complicating matters are the bounty hunters who routinely grab both escaping slaves and free Black citizens and sell them. Combined with the chaos of local residents thwarting the actions of the bounty hunters, the coverup of Henry’s death blows up.

 

I enjoyed Amanda Flower’s historic cozy and anticipate Emily’s next case in the Emily Dickinson Mystery series.

 

Readers, do you enjoy historical fiction, particularly fiction that focuses on real characters?

Writers, do you write historical fiction, and if so, do you include real characters?

 

Margaret S. Hamilton is the author of forty short stories, the first two books in the Jericho Mystery series, and a novella, Erased, set in 1972.

 

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