Called to Justice: A Quaker Midwife Mystery

Early in Maxwell’s engaging second Quaker Midwife mystery (after 2016’s Delivering the Truth), midwife Rose Carroll and her beau, David Dodge, enjoy the 1888 Independence Day fireworks at a farm outside Amesbury, Mass. Only later do they discover that the explosions masked the gunshots that took the life of 17-year-old mill worker Hannah Breed, who earlier in the day confessed to Rose that she was pregnant. Mill supervisor Lester Colby is all too eager to pin the blame on African-born Akwasi Ayensu, a Society of Friends member who owns a local furniture-making and carpentry shop, but Rose sets out to prove her friend Akwasi’s innocence and does so in between checking on her pregnant patients and delivering their babies. And just when she’s on the verge of identifying the killer, she finds herself at the wrong end of a gun barrel. (Apr.)