The Sorrowful Girl (Liam Barrett Gilded Age Novels)
In 1895, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a tramp finds a beautiful young woman dead in the woods. Liam Barrett, a policeman from the nearby town of Adams, determines that the victim’s head was bashed in with a rock and identifies her as Deirdre Monaghan, a scullery maid working for a man who owns an estate and large cotton mill in the area. The mill owner enlists Barrett to find the murderer. The tramp who found the body becomes the chief suspect. Barrett remains unconvinced of the tramp’s guilt and begins to suspect others, including Deirdre Monaghan’s hapless beau, the arrogant mill owner, and his spoiled son and powerful manager. In the meantime, tensions brew in the region. Workers at the mill fear that the owner will reduce wages and the owner fears, or claims to fear, violence from those workers. Against this backdrop, town officials plan a ceremony around the opening of a new library, funded by the mill owner. As the governor travels to Adams to participate in the ceremony, conflicts lead to violence.
Keenan Powell writes well, with suitable vocabulary, increasing tension, and several plot twists. She skillfully alternates points of view between two policemen—the protagonist Liam Barrett, from Adams, and his counterpart, George Washington Stanley, from Pittsfield. Readers may feel that Barrett is occasionally too virtuous, and Stanley too villainous, but for the most part the novel is engaging. Powell brings the central story to a convincing and surprising conclusion, while leaving a few threads that she may take up if she continues Barrett’s story in future books.
