Samantha’s Secret (A More Perfect Union, Book 3)
Betty Bolte continues her winning More Perfect Union series with her latest novel, Samantha’s Secret, in which midwife Samantha McAlester returns from the front lines of the American Revolutionary War to her home of Charles Town and finds unexpected conflicts going on there in the shadow of rumored British evacuation. Headstrong Doctor Trent Cunningham is making enemies in town because of his insistence on establishing rigorously scientific standards for the new hospital he intends to build and staff with carefully-trained medical men.
Trent and Samantha have personalities that would have caused them to clash under any circumstances, but Bolte satisfyingly complicates things further by having them each represent different ends of the medical spectrum; Trent disdains the herbal and folk remedies that work so well for Samantha, and in turn Samantha disdains the detached, clinical outlook that initially causes Trent to be mystified about a strange new infection that shows up in town.
Readers of Bolte’s series will know what to expect in these pages, the sparkles of humor and the richly textured secondary characters, and newcomers will be pleased by how much innocuous catching-up Bolte does – very nearly enough to make Samantha’s Secret a stand-alone volume.
First-rate historical romance.
