The Wolves of Andover: A Novel [Hardcover]

"The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan
English political philosopher (1588-1679)

Life in 1673 Massachusetts lived up to Hobbes' expectations. In THE WOLVES OF ANDOVER, Kathleen Kent offers a realistic depiction of survival through the eyes of colonial woman, Martha Allen. With a sharp eye for detail, Kent does not shy away from historical accuracy in order to create a romance full of beauty and lightness. Instead, she depicts rustic settlers living in primitive conditions in close proximity to livestock. Many are hanging on by a thread against Indian attack, disease and poverty.

Martha's strength is that she rises to meet these challenges. Having reached the age of 20 without a husband, her father can no longer afford to care for her. Martha is sent to live with her cousin, Patience and her family as a servant. Patience is suffering through a difficult pregnancy and requires help around the house. Martha takes on the role of housekeeper caring for Patience's children, Will and Joanna; her husband, Daniel and their indentured servants, John and Thomas.

When a pack of wolves starts terrorizing the countryside, Martha forges a bond with Thomas despite his being 30 years her senior. While attempting to ensnare the lupines, his quiet, steady demeanor captures the interest of the sharp-tongued girl. While strong and physically fit, Thomas' fate lies in the hands of Patience and Daniel. His hope rests on their granting him a parcel of land upon completion of his servitude. Martha's future too is uncertain once Patience is delivered of child.

Yet affairs of the heart come second to survival in this inhospitable environment. The yard is full of mud from freezing rain. Food is improperly stored on the damp cellar floor. A chilled bed struggles for warmth from the hearth. A garden is fertilizes with dried fish and manure while a battery of flies hover overhead. A lover's hands are full of rasping and unyielding calluses. A woman's threadbare bodice is stained with sweat. Not exactly the stuff of romance novels.

Even scenes of love are tempered by the harsh setting. Martha comes across Thomas bare-chested in the barn. However, he is at work slaughtering a crippled calf. Thomas steals admiring glances at Martha, while she is submerged in a boggy marsh gathering wild leeks. When the village Casanova makes a play for Martha, Thomas pushes his body to the breaking point in order to beat his much-younger competitor in a harvest-mowing contest. When wooing her, Thomas backhandedly compares Martha to a doe in a fable saying, "You are the deer shot through with arrows whose heart grows cold for want of being taken."

Yet the focus of the book revolves around Thomas' past. Was he the man who swung the blade that beheaded King Charles I? The regent's son, King Charles II is unwavering in his determination to find his father's killer supposedly well hidden in the New World. A group of hired torturers is bidden to bring back the man who took his father's life.

The novel is succinctly split between the story of Martha and Thomas and that of Thomas' pursuers. It jumps between alternating chapters delineating the approaching meeting point of the two plot lines. This weakens the work as a whole. Instead of staying in the Massachusetts Bay Colony throughout the narrative, a plethora of characters and settings is introduced as the hit men make their way from England to Boston Harbor. The progression of the book loses its steam when divided between what amounts to two stories that are better off standing on their own. While attempting to bring more history into the novel such as the royal court, the back alleys of London and life aboard a merchant ship, Kent falters by veering off course instead of concentrating on the plight of her two main characters.

Overall, Kent's WOLVES bites off a bit more than it can chew.

Contentious Martha is sharp-tongued spinster who falls in love with mysterious hired-hand Thomas Carrier after he saves her from a wolf attack. Safety is not, however, prevalent in the 17th century rugged wilderness of colonial Massachusetts. Human wolves cloaked as people living in plain sight in the surrounding area arrive in the New World to hunt the assassins of King Charles I during the Cromwell years in England. The author deftly crafted this intrigue into this historical fiction novel while Martha navigates the difficulty of being a servant her cousin's home.

The author's intention to show the brutality and volatile nature of the early colonies is admirable, but the novel is dark. Depictions of everyday life such as using an injured lamb for bait and detailed descriptions of dog fighting are chilling. I respect the integration of the political ramifications brought on by the assassination of King Charles I, however felt tossed to and fro from scenes which did not exactly hang together set in England and on shipboard to colonial America. A firmer hand in editing would have benefitted the writing. Secondary characters called by various names such as "Duchess," Keeper of the Privy Council" forced me to turn back to previous mentions to determine to whom the author referred. Editing the many sentences beginning with "it" would have been helpful. Most enjoyable and clearly set forth are the scenes at the Massachusetts farm with Martha and Thomas.

Author Kent is a tenth generation descendent of the Carrier family. She grew up listening to stories of the Salem witch trials and reading Poe, which may explain the darkness of her writing. She calls her book a love story to her family and a tribute to those accused as being witches. Ms. Kent plays well with literary genre by mixing and morphing romance, political intrigue and historical fiction. The Wolves of Andover aroused my interest to read Ms. Kent's first novel, the Heretic's Daughter, told from the perspective of a ten-year-old daughter witnessing the witch trial of her mother.

Reviewed by Holly Weiss, author of Crestmont

There is a brutish energy in Kathleen Kent's prequel to her well-received Heretic's Daughter, a comingling of harsh animalistic dangers with politics, power and passion. The howling wolves that come for their prey are both the two-legged and the four-legged kind, and each will stop at nothing to prevail.

The book opens with the introduction of Martha Allen, a resourceful and sharp-tongued young woman who is forced to take the position of glorified servant to her weak-willed cousin Patience, who is expecting her third child in colonial Massachusetts. There she meets a giant of a man, the Welshman Thomas Carrier, a hired worker with an air of mystery. It is rumored that for the love of Oliver Cromwell's cause, he took an axe to the head of King Charles I and now has a bounty on his own head.

For Martha, Patience, Thomas and the other characters, life in the colonies is not easy. They must deal daily with threats of the plague, famished and hostile Indians, hard toil, and of course, the ever-present danger of the wolves. And the dangers lurk not in the community, but from overseas. Unbeknownst to Thomas, King Charles II has ordered a group of brutal Royalist minions to cross the ocean and bring Thomas back to be drawn and quartered for killing his father.

The two stories - that of Martha and Thomas in the colonies and the expertly trained and thuggish killers who are determined to capture Thomas - are juxtaposed, each highlighting the same theme: the courage and independence that are demanded in a time of danger and change.

Kathleen Kent does not shy away from darkness. She depicts everyday life in all its gore: an injured and frightened lamb being used as bait, a horrific recounting of a pit bull dog fight, the impressments of a young lad who is destined to be thrown overboard, the capture and burning of conspirators at the hands of some Indians. Those who have read Heretic's Daughter know that this is not an author who will whitewash the quest for survival or the challenges of day-to-day existence in an often-unfair world.

Even the progression of the love between Martha and Thomas is tempered by harshness dashed with a dollop of sweetness. At one point, Thomas pauses to tell her, "You are the deer shot through with arrows whose heart grows cold for want of being taken." And eventually: "But for this day, we live. So bide with me. Bide with me and take from me what you can, as I will from you. And however long we walk this earth, we can stand for one another..."

The book falters a bit when it takes the reader away from the main action to the back streets of London or the tempestuous times aboard a creaky merchant ship. Knowing that this is a prequel, the suspense of the hunt for Thomas is stunted. But then Wolves of Andover always rights itself and shines, capturing - through Thomas's telling - the turbulent times and battle between Charles I and Cromwell and focusing on life in the plucky colonies and the budding romance of Martha and Thomas.

It bears mentioning that Kathleen Kent is a descendant of the real Martha Allen Carrier, who was hung as a witch during the Salem trials of 1692. She does her ancestor proud with a book that is admittedly not an historical recreation, but rather a page-turning book of historical fiction (emphasis on the fiction) that, once started, is impossible to put down.