Comes a Time for Burning

December 6, 2010
Set in Port McKinney, Wash., in 1892, Havill's second Thomas Parks mystery (after 2009's Race for the Dying) focuses on the physician's efforts to stop a killer disease. When 23-year-old Lucy Levine from the local hotel of ill repute suddenly takes ill, Parks is confounded by her symptoms and the rapidity of her decline. He watches helplessly as Lucy wastes away, despite his best efforts to save her. When another resident falls similarly ill, Parks is stymied once more, but realizes something terrible is happening in the small community. Lucius Hardy, an astute former medical school colleague who arrives on the scene, proves invaluable help as the two doctors find themselves in the midst of a deadly outbreak of Asian cholera. A gifted storyteller, Havill effortlessly weaves history, medicine, and a colorful cast of characters, though the unflinching medical details aren't for the squeamish.

December 1, 2010

In 1892 Port McKinney, WA, Dr. Thomas Parks (Race for the Dying) faces a cholera epidemic that may have started with one of his nurses. The care of desperately ill people with no known successful treatment and no real hope of stopping the spread of the deadly bacilli drives the plot to a very special ending. VERDICT Absolutely fascinating. For readers of Michael Palmer and Michael Crichton.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2010
Havill, author of the Posadas County mysteries, also writes a series of historical novels set in 1890s Washington State and featuring young Dr. Thomas Parks, a transplanted city boy with a new practiceand a new familyin a somnolent logging village. In this second in the series, we tag along with Doc Parks for 100 pages or so as he copes with the damages that lumberjack jobs and macho games do to young men. Suddenly hes examining a very sick young woman. Bad seafood? No, cholera. The epidemic is on, with its origin providing the books only mystery. Some readers might balk at the stock characters: idealistic doctor, noble wife, sardonic sidekick, really hateful bad guy. A reverend! But historical fiction at its best can show long-gone events happening in a dynamic manner, and thats just what Havill does in this vivid portrait of a town in crisis. Havills prose makes it a sensory experience: the taste of fresh coffee and jam on toast balanced by the smell of raw carbolic and burning sulphur. And much worse. The last decade of the nineteenth-century has its fans. This is for them.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)