The Resurrectionist

Dunlap’s clever debut explores medical history, queer love, and the cost of progress in 1828 Scotland. James Willoughby’s patrician, cash-strapped English family wants him to choose a wealthy wife and a dignified career. Instead, he decides to become a doctor, a lowly profession at the time. James enrolls in the University of Edinburgh, where Scotland’s strict human cadaver laws make dissection all but impossible. To make do, he turns to a private program run by Dr. Louis Malstrom, who obtains corpses from body snatchers, or “Resurrectionists.” In lieu of paying the program’s steep tuition, James agrees to assist the crew of Resurrectionists led by Malstrom’s brilliant young assistant, a man named Nye MacKinnon. Exhilarated by his medical studies and convinced of body snatching’s scientific necessity, James has his first sexual experience with Nye and the two fall in love. James’s excitement over his new life is tempered by a visit from his sister, who demands he return home, and by two thuggish Irishmen who attempt to control the Resurrectionist network with threats and blackmail. Dunlap melds comic, tender, and macabre moments in her well-plotted tale, and makes hay with embellished historical facts. Readers will be entertained. Agent: Laura Bradford, Bradford Literary. (Jan.)