Quaker midwife Rose Carroll hears secrets and keeps con­fi­dences as she attends births of the rich and poor alike in an 1888 Massachusetts mill town. When the town’s world-famed car­riage indus­try is threat­ened by the work of an arson­ist, and a car­riage fac­tory owner’s adult son is stabbed to death with Rose's own knitting needle, she is drawn into solv­ing the mys­tery. Things get dicey after the same owner’s mis­tress is also mur­dered, leav­ing her one-week-old baby with­out a mother. The Quaker poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier helps Rose by lending words of advice and support. While strug­gling with being less than the per­fect Friend, Rose draws on her strengths as a counselor and prob­lem solver to bring two mur­der­ers to justice before they destroy the town’s carriage industry and the people who run it.  Praise: “Maxwell introduces a fascinating new heroine with her Quaker midwife Rose Carroll.”—VICTORIA THOMPSON, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MURDER ON ST. NICHOLAS AVE "[Rose's] strong personality combined with the author’s distinctive voice and vivid writing style transported me instantly to another time and place."—KATHY LYNN EMERSON, MALICE DOMESTIC 2014 GUEST OF HONOR AND AUTHOR OF HOW TO WRITE KILLER HISTORICAL MYSTERIES, MURDER IN THE QUEEN'S WARDROBE, AND THE DIANA SPAULDING 1888 MYSTERIES