Douglas Grudzina

Hi everyone. Just thought I'd toss out an update and see how everyone else is doing. I got the analysis of my first hundred pages back from Michael yesterday. I can't say it was a glowing review, but I don't think it was as horrendous as it could have been. At least they're not advising me to ditch the whole project! lol.

I'd love to hear how some of the rest of you are doing after that really exciting week in New York.

At any rate, have a great rest of the summer. We're under a heat advisory here for the next few days, so it's a great time to get caught started on my massive rewrite.

 

Thanks for starting this and reposting it for those of us who are mildly techno-challenged. ;-)

STORY STATEMENT:

Thomas Mather must discover the identities of the two men whose autopsies he has witnessed and then find their killer in order to clear his brother’s name and restore his family’s reputation.

 

ANTAGONISTIC FORCES: 

The first and most obvious antagonist is Dr. William Shippen, chief lecturer at the Pennsylvania School Medicine. He does not accept Mather’s insistence that the deaths of the two autopsy subjects are related. He vehemently discourages Mather from pursuing any action that will distract him from his studies. Ultimately, he expels Mather from school and causes him to be evicted from the guest house where he lodges. Shippen takes his profession seriously and is extremely protective of the medical school he has helped found. He at first believes Mather might be a potentially great physician, but he cannot tolerate what he perceives to be Mather’s frivolity and lack of mental discipline.

 

BREAKOUT TITLE(S):

Still got nothing better than: Assassination of Titans

 

COMPARABLES:

Strongest comp is still the AMC 2014-2017 television series Turn: Washington’s Spies, based on Alexander Rose's 2007 Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring (2007). Dramatizes actual historical events but takes some liberties by collapsing events, altering timelines, and combining characters for narrative purpose. Values authenticity more than  accuracy (Credit to Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club, etc., for that phrase).

 

Laurie Halse Anderson’s Rebellion 1776 (2025) might also compare nicely. Focuses on fictional people caught up in early-United States historical events with a nod to contemporary issues.

 

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: 

Philadelphia, May 1787: When the subjects of two autopsies resemble a murder for which his brother was hanged, young medical student Thomas Mather’s investigation stumbles upon a plot that threatens his standing in the school, the life of General George Washington, and the very future of the United States.

 

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: 

Mather’s primary inner conflict stems from his family background. He is the only one of his parents’ seven sons to live to adulthood. Four years earlier – in March of 1783 – his older brother, Andrew, was accused of shooting a young man of their community. He was tried, convicted, and hanged for that murder. He and his parents became pariahs in their community. Mather, as the parents’ one surviving child, assumed the responsibility of somehow restoring his family’s reputation. This is one of his motivations for choosing medicine as a career and a significant reason it is so devastating when he is expelled from school.

 

When he recognizes the circumstances of the deaths of his two autopsy subjects, he becomes fully convinced of his brother’s innocence and his need to exonerate him.

 

There are a few “triggering events” in the novel that reveal Mather’s inner conflict as well as providing clues to the ultimate solution:

 

1. he experiences severe physical illness as the body of each of the autopsy subjects is revealed;

2. he experiences a similar reaction when the body of Obedience Dyer is found to have been killed in much the same way as the others;

3. he reacts violently when he recognizes Jeremiah Whittier/Gideon Jones as the mysterious man on the horse present at the scene of the first murder in 1783.

 

Finally, Mather’s goal is complicated by the simple fact that no one else even knows that there has been a series of related murders, especially recent murders that might be related to a years-old case that is believed to have been solved. Thus, it is understandable that Dr. Shippen and Mrs. Hoames are so impatient with him. As the stakes increase and broaden, Mather’s sense of helpless isolation intensifies. Only his friends Caleb Freeborn and Riona accept his claims and offer him any help.

 

FINAL ASSIGNMENT:

In the early spring of 1787, the city of Philadelphia sat, poised like an orphan, her tattered clothes scrubbed, mended, and pressed into a poor semblance of presentability to impress her prospective parents. The war years had not been kind to the once-thriving commerce town: the British blockade had choked the city’s finances, and the British occupation had choked its soul.

 

And the years after the Revolution had not been much kinder.

 

Trade was still stifled. The states that Philadelphia merchants would trade with found it more profitable to deal directly with European powers. Even the western counties of Pennsylvania found it easier to ship via the Susquehanna River and trade through Baltimore than to transport their goods over the mountains to the Delaware River port. To add insult to injury, Congress had abandoned its home city like a prodigal son. The provenance of the Declaration of Independence, the site of the nation’s first library and first hospital, was no longer the seat of the United States in Congress Assembled. That distinct honor had been transferred to New York, and the slight cut the wounded dignity of the city’s leaders – and their purses as well.

 

And the Bell – the city’s treasured Bell – had been removed from its home and sent into hiding during the British occupation. When the occupation ended, and the Bell was brought home, its perch atop the State House was deemed decrepit. The entire steeple was torn down, replaced by a simple spire. Now, the humiliated Bell huddled in a corner of the yard, brought out on special occasions like an eccentric aunt.

 

Granted, there had been signs of recovery, and the hammers of industry were gradually being heard in more and more sections. Slowly, block by block, streets were being re-cobbled, public buildings were being washed and painted, boarded windows repaned, and roofs mended so that their tiles shone in the morning sun. But recovery was slow, and hope was dim. The promise of the Revolution seemed about to die in its cradle, and there were those who had to admit that their city – which had proudly served as midwife to that new American nation – was tired and shabby and about to unravel, just as the new nation it had birthed was. 

 

Even Caleb Freeborn had heard of the revolts in Massachusetts the year before. Shay’s rebellion they called it – something to do with banks and farmers. Caleb did not understand it, but he knew that such rebellions so soon after the Revolution were bad signs for the new nation.

 

He’d listened to the Reverend Allen’s sermons condemning the slave trade and the exportation of distilled spirits to Africa where the slaves came from. He’d heard “the Missus” complain about the cost of sugar and flour and the unavailability of cloth goods. He’d heard the guests who passed him at the door as they entered and exited the Indian Queen Tavern, talking as if he weren’t there. They talked of Spain threatening the South and West, England still threatening the North, and France always wanting to expand her American Empire.

 

He himself had witnessed, four years earlier, the revolt that had sent Congress fleeing to Princeton and then to New York. Unhappy soldiers from the War surrounded the State House and held Congress essentially hostage inside. Fortunately, violence had been averted then, but one way or another, it seemed, the thirteen states were going to have to fight another war.

 

Some people expressed a vague optimism about the Federal Convention that was set to begin – in Philadelphia, where such an important event should occur. While most of the city accepted the official account – that the convention had been called with the sole purpose of mending the flaws in the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union – Caleb had heard it whispered that really they were planning another Revolution. The anxiety in the city was high, and merchant and statesman alike debated the advisability of simply maintaining the status quo rather than possibly yielding up any of their state’s and their city’s hard-won rights.

 

During the course of the story, there are two public demonstrations that threaten to break out into dangerous violence. The first protests the Congress of the Confederation’s unwillingness to make good on their promise to veterans of the Revolution (especially disgruntled former officers) to pay money owed and provide at least some portion of their agreed-upon pensions. The other protests the Federal Convention itself, which they view as an attempt by the higher echelons of society to consolidate their power and establish an American aristocracy, possibly even a monarchy with George Washington as the king.

To make history, all you need is to overcome the past ...

 

Late April 1787

The chief virtue of the hunter is patience. The next is endurance. Whether stalking the prey or lying in wait, the important thing was to … wait. To reveal one’s presence too soon, to fire too early would mean to allow the prey to escape and the hunt to fail.

This hunt had been a lie-in-wait. For three bitterly cold days, the hunter had sat perched on a lower limb of the still winter bare maple tree, waiting for the quarry to arrive.

This was where he would have to come. This was where the river narrowed and grew shallow. The tide still affected the depth of the water so at low tide, one could walk across in water barely knee deep. And this was where the inn was – where the expected prey would find a warm meal and a comfortable bed.

A small flock of birds fluttered and twittered from a tree at the water’s edge. Something was in the river, crossing the river, about to reach the shore. The hunter raised the rifle and peered down the long barrel. The hand that squeezed the trigger was calm and steady. The single, sharp crack ripped the morning. The acrid smoke smelled of triumph and defeat, and the report’s echo reverberated up and down the river as if to announce that the deed was done.

This deed was done.

The unsuspecting quarry stopped in mid-step. The hunter could not read the man’s face because the face was now a shambles of blood and flesh. He imagined the expression would have been surprise. Surprise and horror.

The dead man dropped to his knees and then fell face-down into the shallow water. The echo of the one shot faded, and everything was once again silent.

The hunter scrambled down from the tree and sprinted to the corpse. The satchel the man had been carrying held  a small packet of papers folded and sealed with wax. These the hunter  secured in an inner cloak pocket. Nimble fingers untied laces and worked buttons. Before long, the body had been stripped of its clothing. Coat, vest, shirt, and breeches were rolled into a threadbare shoulder sack. When everything was gathered up, the dead man’s killer retreated into the trees, leaving the naked corpse to whatever the birds, the beasts, and the weather might do to it.

 

Monday, May 7, 1787

 

Thomas Mather could not look away from the corpse. The flames of the oil  lamps at the head and the foot of the examination table cast gruesome shadows that danced on the bloated flesh. 

“Gentlemen,” Chief Surgeon Doctor William Shippen announced in the resonant baritone of a stage performer, “despite the outward appearance of our specimen and the fact that this unfortunate fellow was discovered floating in the Delaware River, I am encouraged to hope that the temperature of the water may have slowed the corruption process, and our friend’s relevant organs may be better preserved than those I have been able to show in some time.”

Mather heard his teacher’s voice, but the corpse just lay there indifferent. He was new to the Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and this was his first autopsia cadaverum, his first anatomical examination of a human cadaver. As excited as he was to be beginning his studies, he also feared that the sick feeling deep in his stomach was not due only to anticipation. The great doctor was still talking, but the only facts Mather comprehended were the body on the table in the center of a small cluster of medical residents and the bile rising in his throat. He pressed his hand to his mouth and forced the acid back down with a cough.

Shippen took up a scalpel and cut an incision, deep and straight, from the top of the cadaver’s right shoulder to the bottom of his sternum.

“During the reign of the infamous Bloody Mary of England,” he continued, “the Reverend Thomas Becon wrote that the dead can reveal no secrets. But the good Mr. Becon was mistaken. There is a great deal that the living can learn from the dead.” 

The dead man’s head was completely concealed in a cotton sack – just as someone condemned to the gallows would be hooded before having his head slipped into the noose. The colorless torso shone with a yellow sheen.

“In fact,” Shippen continued, “as early as 44 B.C., the Roman physician Antistius was able to determine that, of the twenty-three stab wounds dealt Julius Caesar, only one was fatal – delivered directly to Mr. Caesar’s sternum.” He indicated the chest of the dead man on the table. “I rather suspect that this fatal blow was delivered by none other than Brutus himself, thus evoking Caesar’s famous, ‘Et tu, Brute?’”  He looked around at the half-dozen medical students who stared back, puzzled by the digression. “Then…of course … fall Caesar.”

“How did this man die, Dr. Shippen?” the student beside Mather asked. “Did he drown?”

Shippen had just begun a second incision, identical to the first, this one beginning at the left shoulder. He paused and peered curiously at the student. “Why would you ask that?”

The student shifted as if he were trying to hide behind Mather. “I’m sorry, sir. Just curious.”

“I will admit that there is ample evidence to suggest a drowning death, though I doubt many of you yet know what that evidence is.” He looked up at his class. “Since the opportunity presents itself, however, if you are interested –”

Several of the students nodded eagerly, and there were a few whispers of assent.

“All right, then,” the doctor continued. “Note, for example, the maceration of the skin –” He set the scalpel on the table beside the body. “– the wrinkling of the fingers and the palm of the hand. You have probably noticed a similar effect on the skin of a laundress whose hands have spent too much time in the wash water.”

Mather felt another gush of acid. He did not look like one subject to fainting, yet he felt the room darken and shrink around him. The floor shifted beneath his feet.

“Observe the curtis anserina – the gooseflesh – on the arms – ” Shippen draped the arm over the body’s torso, but it slid and dropped to the side of the table, swinging like a pendulum. “ – and the legs.”

“Dr. Shippen,” another eager-voiced student interrupted, “why would the legs reveal the same gooseflesh as the arms and the toes...the same...well, the same wrinkling as the fingers. Even underwater, wouldn’t these parts have been protected by the man’s boots?”

Shippen thought not to reprimand the student for the interruption and instead simply answer the question. “One might think, yes. However, the curious truth is that this corpse was in a state of complete undress when it was discovered.”

“He was naked?” Mather asked.

“Indeed,” Shippen replied. “As naked as the day he was born. Now ...” He adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose. “What are we to learn from that detail?”

“Perhaps he was bathing when he met his demise.”

“Too cold. More likely his clothing was stolen by some vagrant.”

Shippen entertained each guess with a cheerless chuckle and a shake of his head. He was a serious-looking man with mournful eyes.

“But how did he die?”

“And how did he come to be floating naked in the Delaware River?”

Shippen made a show of impatience, but his long face revealed a glimmer of amusement. “How he came to be floating naked in the river is indeed a mystery. However, the probable cause of death is considerably easier to determine.”

With a dramatic flourish, he pulled off the cotton sack that had hidden the cadaver’s head. The entire cluster of students – even those nearing the completion of their education – gasped. The bottom of the man’s face was gone, the jawbone shattered, a gaping hole of raw flesh where the mouth should have been.

Shippen then turned the man’s head away from the class. The back of the head was more intact, revealing only one small hole – the size of a peach pit – toward the top of his skull.

Mather gasped audibly and fell backward into the student behind him.

“He was shot!” someone shouted. 

The young man Mather had stumbled into shoved him forward and into the student who had just spoken.

“Indeed,” Shippen agreed, unaware of the growing disturbance in his demonstration theater. “However, we still cannot be certain whether he was shot while he still breathed or after he was already dead.”

“But who would shoot a dead man?” someone toward the back asked.

Shippen replaced the sack over the corpse’s head. “We might just as well ask who would shoot a living man.”

Muttering an apology, Mather righted himself and staggered up the shallow steps toward the back of the theater. As soon as he passed into the corridor, he bent over double and emptied the contents of his stomach.

Shippen pondered the dead man on the table before him. “Interesting as all of this might be, it is neither hither nor thither for our intents and purposes. The time may indeed come when you are called upon to dissect a corpse to aid in an inquiry into the cause and manner of death. But today we are interested only in learning what this poor man has to tell us about saving the living.” He took up the scalpel and completed his incisions, forming a gigantic Y that spanned the corpse’s chest and abdomen. He then produced a small saw – not unlike one a skilled wood carver might use – and began to cut carefully through the exposed sternum and rib cage.

 

The waning moon set early on the night of Thomas Mather’s first autopsy, and a gauzy mist from the river obliterated the feeble candlelight from the street lanterns. No one within the boarding establishment of Mrs. Martha Hoames at 180 High Street heard the carriage pull up to the curb and then drive away again. No one inside saw the carriage’s solitary passenger pause on the walk and cock his head to listen as the bell of the Pennsylvania State House clock chimed the quarter hour. The State House stood only in the next block, but the melancholy toll sounded far, far away.

No one inside heard the visitor exhale an anxious sigh as he retrieved his bag and stepped up to the great dark house’s front door.

The boots that climbed the stoop were immaculately polished. The hand that reached for the knocker was fashionably gloved, and the bright, metallic rap of the knocker was quick and polite.

Sensing no movement in the house in response to his knock, the late traveler raised the brass ring a second time and let it fall more urgently. Finally, he heard the click of a lock and the clack of a bolt, and the door swung open.

“Beg pardon, sir.”

The girl who answered the door was young. Pretty. Her face was well-scrubbed, and the Irish in her voice was thick and musical.

“We warn’t shirr we heard a knock until ye’ knocked again, and then we war’ shirr.”

The caller removed his tricorne hat and bowed his head deeply. He was a handsome man, boyish wisps of sand-colored hair carefully gathered behind his head in a ribbon of silk. His eyes were wide and clear and vivid blue.

“I do apologize for the lateness of my arrival,” he said. His voice was so soft that the girl had to turn her head and lean toward him to hear. “But the roads are so bad, and I almost feared I would not make it tonight.”

The girl offered a clumsy curtsey. “Yes sir. And who should I tell the Missus has arrived?”

“You must be new.” He studied her face with condescending amusement. “What is your name?”

She curtseyed again. “Riona, sir.”

“Riona.” He scraped the mud from his boots and stepped past the girl and into Mrs. Hoames’ bright front hall. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, like someone returning home after a long journey.

 “I am James Madison,” he explained. “Would you please tell your mistress that I have returned?”

Across the High Street, a bulky shadow watched the rectangle of yellow light disappear as the door to the guest house closed. He stared several minutes at the space where the light had been and then turned toward the river.

He thought he heard someone whistling. Someone behind him. A simple ditty.

Pausing, he cocked his head like a dog. After what seemed like a very long time, he heard it again – unmistakable whistling, the same tune only this time a half-step down. It was an old shanty –  about a drunken sailor.

The third line followed immediately,  more or less a repeat of the first.

The man who’d watched James Madison’s arrival glanced to his left and right and then whistled the final five notes, completing the verse.

From out of nowhere a young urchin stood beside him and grasped his hand.

“A penny for a fatherless boy, sir?” he asked. “Killed by the British just five year ago tomorrow … ”

The man fumbled  for his purse, but the boy let go of his hand and disappeared into the fog as quickly as he’d appeared. 

The Drunken Sailor, the man whispered to himself. Five o’clock tomorrow. Again looking around him, he continued on his way toward the Delaware River.

 

It was a night of restless dreams for Thomas Mather. He saw the naked corpse on the table in Dr. Shippen’s demonstration theater. But he wasn’t in the dark classroom. This body lay in a sunny field aglow with yellow crocuses. A mask of congealed blood glossed the raw flesh that had once been a face.

Come away, Thomas!

He stood, transfixed by the naked body that, but for the face, could have been napping on a pleasant afternoon in the meadow.

Thomas!

A strong hand clutched his upper arm and pulled him. Still, he could not look away from the dead man sleeping in the crocuses.

 

 

OLD OPENING SCENE:

The water was rising fast, already reaching the tops of his boots. The courier clutched his leather satchel closer to his breast and pressed forward. His woolen coattails, pulled up and tied around his waist like a kitchen apron, were sodden. But that did not matter so long as the document he was carrying remained dry. It meant nothing to him, just a small packet of papers – only a few pages – folded and sealed with wax. He himself was not privileged to know its contents, but it had been emphasized to him that those contents had the power to salvage at least one life.

The water flooding his boots was barely above freezing, fed by the upriver springtime snowmelt. He fought to ignore the numbness creeping up his legs and concentrated on the flickering of a lamp in a window and smoke curling from a kitchen chimney on the Pennsylvania side of the river.

Surely that was the inn, where he was expected, where there would be a hot breakfast and maybe some dry clothes.

He was so tired.

And cold.

He slipped once on a rock and fell to his knee, but the satchel remained dry. By the time he finally stepped from the frigid water, the first sun cast his shadow on the steep riverbank. He’d been careful not to be followed, but looked back one final time at the river he’d forded. He drew in a deep breath and rested for the first time since he’d plunged into the icy water in New Jersey.

He heard a sharp crack behind him, and a dozen or so startled birds fluttered away in every direction. He caught barely a whiff of acrid smoke before the lead bullet entered his skull with such force that he staggered forward several steps before dropping to his knees and then falling face first into the river.

The one with the rifle sprinted to the corpse and grabbed the satchel, securing it in an inner cloak pocket. Nimble fingers untied laces and worked buttons. Before long, the body had been stripped of its clothing. Coat, vest, shirt, and breeches were rolled into a threadbare shoulder sack. When everything was gathered up, the dead man’s killer retreated into the darkness of the trees, leaving the naked corpse to whatever the birds, the beasts, and the weather might do to it.

 

 

NEW OPENING SCENE (essentially the same scene with a change in POV):

The chief virtue of the hunter is patience. The next is endurance. Whether stalking the prey or lying in wait, the important thing was to … wait. To reveal one’s presence too soon, to fire too early would mean to allow the prey to escape and the hunt to fail.

This hunt had been a lie-in-wait. For three bitterly cold days, the hunter had sat perched on a lower limb of the still winter bare maple tree, waiting for the quarry to arrive.

This was where he would have to come. This was where the river narrowed and grew shallow. The tide still affected the depth of the water so at low tide, one could walk across in water barely knee deep. And this was where the inn was – where the expected prey would find a warm meal and a comfortable bed.

A small flock of birds fluttered and twittered from a tree at the water’s edge. Something was in the river, crossing the river, about to reach the shore. The hunter raised the rifle and peered down the long barrel. The hand that squeezed the trigger was calm and steady. The single, sharp crack tore the morning. A whiff of acrylic smoke _____, and the report’s echo reverberated up and down the river as if to announce that the deed was done.

This deed was done.

The unsuspecting quarry stopped in mid-step. The hunter could not read the man’s face because the face was now a mash of blood and flesh. But he imagined the expression would have been surprise. Surprise and horror.

The dead man dropped to his knees and then fell forward into the shallow water. The echo of the one shot faded, and everything was once again silent.

The hunter scrambled down from the tree and sprinted to the corpse. The satchel the man had been carrying held  a small packet of papers folded and sealed with wax. These the hunter  secured in an inner cloak pocket. Nimble fingers untied laces and worked buttons. Before long, the body had been stripped of its clothing. Coat, vest, shirt, and breeches were rolled into a threadbare shoulder sack. When everything was gathered up, the dead man’s killer retreated into the darkness of the trees, leaving the naked corpse to whatever the birds, the beasts, and the weather might do to it.

STORY STATEMENT:  Troubled by the mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of two unidentified corpses, a young medical student sets out to discover who they were and why they were killed. Were they delegates to the great federal convention that was about to begin, members of a secretive and exclusive  post-Revolution society, or were they among the veterans set on avenging what they perceived as wrongs committed against them by the fledgling United States government? His investigation results in a third death as well as his expulsion from school and his lodgings, and nearly ends his life.

ANTAGONIST:  Young and pretty but uncouth and clearly brought up roughly, Riona is a new maid on the staff of Martha Hoames’ fashionable guest house. She is befriended by Thomas Mather and Caleb Freeborn although they know nothing about her background. Eventually, they learn that she is the daughter of Thomas Hicks, the only person executed for his participation in an abortive plot against George Washington’s life early in the Revolutionary War. Riona has harbored a lifelong grudge, pushed to a crisis by the recent publication of a brochure about the incident. Riona has come to Philadelphia, knowing that most of the “great men” involved in her father’s death will be attending the Federal Convention. Her goal is to avenge her father’s death by killing each of the men who participated in her father’s trial and execution – including General Washington, who sentenced the man to death and signed the execution warrant.

BREAKOUT TITLE: 

Assassination of Titans. My current working title. I can’t say I love it.

The Rivers Run [Ran] Red. I just thought of this one. It works on the one hand because the first body is discovered floating in the Delaware River, and the second is found near the Schuylkill. On the other hand, is it maybe too “sensational”? And is the alliteration a bit much? Still, I kind of like it.

With Half so Good a Will. Just before he kills himself in Act V, scene v of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Brutus says, “Caesar, now be still. / I killed not thee with half so good a will.”

COMPARABLES

David Liss, The Whiskey Rebels, Comparable time period. A close intermingling of (slightly fictionalized) historical figures and events with completely fictional characters and incidents.

Turn: Washington’s Spies (AMC television dramatization of Alexander Rose’s Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring): Comparable time period. A close intermingling of (slightly fictionalized) historical figures and events with completely fictional characters and incidents.

Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels. Probably less fictionalized than my project, but still a very close weaving of historical fact with some fictional elements and narrative.

More recent comps:

S.G. Maclean, The Seeker  (2015) – use of historical figure as key secondary character

Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton (2018) – fictional account/narrative of historical incidents; relative same period

Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, Blood and Treasure (2022)— Daniel Boone … fictional treatment of historical figure

HOOK LINE

In his attempt to discover the identities of two unidentified bodies and the circumstances of their deaths, a young medical student risks everything and discovers a plan of revenge that threatens his life, the life of General George Washington, and the future of the United States of America itself.

CONFLICTS

Primary: Thomas Mather hopes to identify the two men whose bodies have been used in demonstrations at the Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He encounters increasing resistance from his primary instructor, Dr. William Shippen, who ultimately expels Mather from the medical school and from his landlady, Mrs. Martha Hoames, who evicts him from her guest house. His investigation is led in the wrong direction by allowing his friends Caleb Freeborn and Riona convince him that the mysterious Jeremiah Whittier is the leader of a plot to avenge perceived wrongs committed against those who sacrificed everything during the Revolutionary War and were not satisfactorily compensated by Congress. When he finally encounters the murderer face to face, he almost becomes her next victim lest he keep her from committing her final act of vengeance.

Secondary:

Thomas Mather is lonely, separated from his family, and harboring doubts that medicine is indeed his calling. A farm boy, his only friends in the City are two servants in the guest house, the housemaid Riona, and sixteen-year-old bi-racial Caleb Freeborn. He is his parents’ only child to survive to adulthood, so when his parents finally agree to let him study medicine instead of work the family farm (Cain was a grower of vegetables, but Jesus was a healer of the sick), he feels the need to distinguish himself. Of course his need to solve this mystery of the cadavers nearly destroys his chance to be the son to his parents he wants to be.

Social Environment:

Caleb Freeborn cannot remember a time when he did not live and work at Martha Hoames’s guest house. Now a doorman and all-around household assistant, he knows he is witnessing history unfold, but he longs to be a part of it, to do something important and to make his mark. He also knows nothing about his parentage except for a few trinkets he believes his mother and father may have left for him. As he reaches adulthood, his desire to know who he is and where he is from intensifies.

Jeremiah Whittier is a late arrival to Mrs. Homes’s second establishment, The Indian Queen Tavern. He is inexplicably present at key events in pre-federal convention Philadelphia, especially a secret gathering of disgruntled Revolutionary War veterans and a  meeting of the exclusive Society of the Cincinnati. He comfortably associates with the highest echelon of Philadelphia society – including James Madison and George Washington – as well as the disenfranchised, the war-weary, and the near-criminal. His two main objectives in Philadelphia, however, are to clear his name of long-ago allegations of treason and to find information about a long-lost love and the child he believes he fathered.

SETTING

In May 1787, the city of Philadelphia is a mere relic of the mighty capital of commerce and political thought it once had been. The British blockade during the Revolution had choked the city’s finances, and the British occupation had choked its soul. The years after the Revolution had been no easier.

Trade is still stifled. Newly independent states can now trade directly with Europe and no longer need the middleman services Philadelphia once provided. By the same token, the counties west of the Appalachian Mountains ship their goods via the Susquehanna River and trade through Baltimore rather than transport their goods over the mountains.

Once-cobbled streets are now rutted and muddy, the cobblestones having been dug up and used as cannonballs during the war. Windows are broken and boarded. Roofs are burned, tiles broken and missing.

While Philadelphia had been the birthplace of American Independence and the political capital of the infant nation, Congress had abandoned its home four years earlier when angry mobs of Revolutionary War veterans surrounded the State House and threatened the government with violence. Many of these disgruntled veterans still dwell within the city, their grudges having never satisfactorily been settled. The threat of violence lurks on virtually every corner.

Further, the federal convention has been delayed by weeks of foul weather. Delegates arrive late. Heavy rain and floods have made the roads impassable. Days are cloudy and rainy; nights are choked with fogs from the Delaware River. Even among the most peace-loving residents of the city, the mood is tense, a field of dried grass that needs only a spark to ignite it.

It is in this war-torn, poverty-stricken city, struggling to regain some semblance of its former status and influence, that Thomas Mather investigates the deaths of two unknown bodies and discovers Riona’s plot to avenge her father’s death.