The Resurrectionist
“a drama that's part romance, part mystery, part crime caper. Each part is told with breathtaking pacing and rich descriptions. Each character is vivid and leaps off the page with vibrant personality.”
The Resurrectionist introduces a new talent to the field of gothic historical literature. A. Rae Dunlap has done her homework and evocatively creates a picture of 19th century Edinburgh, an educational center particularly known for its medical training. Our guide through this esoteric world is James, the third son of a noble but poor family. Usually the profession of choice for such a son would be the clergy, but James rejects that.
"The insuppressible notion began to dawn on me that I was, in my core, a man of Science. And not just any science: human science, the study of the body, of man himself, of sinew and bone and humour and blood. The essence of life, the very organs that granted our being, that was the wonder of it all!"
James goes to Edinburgh as the "shining beacon of medical discovery, home of Hume and the New Enlightenment, a city unparalleled even on the Continent in its quest for progress on the scientific front." He ends up learning far more than he'd anticipated.
His classes make a deep impression on him, but the story centers on James’ life outside the university as the narrative turns into a drama that's part romance, part mystery, part crime caper. Each part is told with breathtaking pacing and rich descriptions. Each character is vivid and leaps off the page with vibrant personality.
The narrative twist comes when James ends up joining a crew that steals bodies from graves to use for anatomy lessons. His motives, he tells himself, are educational, and in some way a gift of second life for the corpses.
"I became accustomed to the morbid sights, smells, and sounds that rose up around us in a macabre assault on our senses, I found that the deep devotion to purpose that our mission entailed was justification enough to keep any of my more delicate inclinations at bay."
The digging up of bodies is risky business but becomes even more dangerous when a new crew comes to Edinburgh. The tinge of gothic horror becomes overlaid with tension as James and his partner in crime (and in bed) fight for their survival. More than that, James' "very place in the progress of the Enlightenment" is threatened.
Dunlap has written a page-turner of an adventure, one that takes the reader from anatomy lessons to taverns to graveyards, running through the maze of Edinburgh's streets, following James as he fights for his life to have the meaning he wants it to have. Medical school has never been as dramatic or entertaining as it is in this book.