Cradle to Grave

At the start of Kuhns’s intriguing third late-18th-century historical (after 2013’s Death of a Dyer), traveling weaver Will Rees and his new wife, Lydia, leave their Maine farm for a wintry trip to the isolated village of Dover Springs, N.Y., where their Shaker friend, Sister Hannah, aka “Mouse,” has been accused of kidnapping Maggie Whitney’s five children after finding their mother too drunk to care for them. En route, Will and Lydia get word that Maggie has been murdered, probably by Mouse. On arrival in Dover Springs, Will struggles to pry information out of the close-mouthed residents, nearly all of whom prove to be hiding dreadful secrets. At times, the tribulations of the impoverished Whitney children threaten to overwhelm the story, but readers will sympathize with Will, whose interactions with the children spur deep guilt about how uninvolved he was in the raising of David, his grown son. Agent: Mitchell S. Waters, Curtis Brown. (June)