The Courier’s Wife
Vanessa Lind begins The Courier’s Wife in Washington, DC in 1862. Nineteen-year-old Hattie Logan works for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, unsealing and peeking at letters Southerners send to friends and relatives. She looks for secret codes that letter writers use to convey information about the Confederacy’s military plans. Hattie’s parents live in Indiana but have ties to the South. Hattie tries to hide that fact since her heart is with the North. Lucy Hamilton, also working in the mailroom, competes with Hattie for a more exciting assignment in Baltimore. At first, two other Pinkerton operatives—Kate Warne who excels as a spy and Thom Welton who excels as a courier—select Lucy over Hattie. When Lucy falls short of expectations, Warne and Welton turn their attention to Hattie, selecting her to pose as a southerner and deliver letters in Richmond. She accompanies Welton to that city, playing the part of his wife. Hattie and Thom fall in love but soon find Richmond much more perilous than they expected.
Lind creates compelling female characters and vivid settings in both Washington and Richmond. She has chosen to introduce a large set of characters in the first half of her novel, a new set of characters in the second half, and to leave both the main plot and the subplots unfinished. Presumably Lind will pick up the threads in future volumes of her planned series, Secrets of the Blue and Gray, but readers may wish that at least some of the tales were resolved.
