I read this novel about three months ago, at the beginning of lockdown, but I’m finally writing the review the night before this post goes live. That’s not my usual practice—my routine is to write my review as soon as possible after finishing a book. That’s for two practical reasons: so my reviews don’t pile up, and so I don’t forget the details. Yes, it happens.
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.
About Katharine Swartz
After spending three years as a diehard New Yorker, Katharine Swartz now lives in the Lake District with her husband, an Anglican minister, their five children, and a Golden Retriever. She enjoys such novel things as long country walks and chatting with people in the street, and her children love the freedom of village life—although she often has to ring four or five people to figure out where they’ve gone off to!
She writes women’s fiction as well as contemporary romance for Mills & Boon Modern under the name Kate Hewitt, and whatever the genre she enjoys delivering a compelling and intensely emotional story.
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About The Widow’s Secret
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?
Find The Widow’s Secret online at:
