Promises to the Dead

Two stories intertwine in Pirrone’s engrossing third historical featuring Chicago police detective Frank Hanley and the woman he chastely loves, Rivka Kelmansky (after 2015’s For You Were Strangers). The first starts in 1870 and centers on Ezra Hayes, a freed slave who’s forced into hard labor on a sugar plantation, and follows him through his escape and journey to New Orleans and on to Chicago, where he crosses paths with Hanley in 1872. In the second, Hanley’s search for missing Lawrence O’Shea, a clerk for the Illinois, St. Louis and Grand Southern Railway, ends with Lawrence’s body being pulled from the Chicago River. The police determine Lawrence was dead before he hit the water. Why murder a lowly railroad clerk? And what’s the relationship between Ezra and Ada, the wife of Rivka’s brother, Aaron? Pirrone dramatically highlights the racism, corruption, and greed that marked post–Civil War America through the travails of her heroic characters. Readers will hope to see more of Hanley and Rivka soon. (Aug.)