Hearts and bones

the long version

Margaret Lawrence introduces her unforgettable heroine, Hannah Trevor, whose disregard for convention sets her apart from the other women of the small town of Rufford, Maine. Yet as a midwife, Hannah is intimately involved in the lives of people simultaneously capable of great joy and deeply scarred by a bloody war of revolution. Now, in the midst of a merciless winter, an abomination has occurred: a young Rufford wife and mother has been raped and murdered in her home. Few knew the tormented victim well, but she named her three attackers in a horrified letter of accusation written before she died. And one of the accused is Daniel Josselyn - a wealthy man of honor, a wounded war veteran, and Hannah's one-time lover, the father of her illegitimate daughter. A savage crime has touched Hannah's world, impelling her to join her dear, damaged friend, local constable Will Quaid, in his investigation.