Luke Lewis is the son of an itinerant preacher in Upper Canada
and a recent medical graduate of Montreal’s McGill University. In 1851, he
joins the practice of the aging, Edinburgh-trained Dr. Stewart Christie in
Thornhill, Ontario. It is a small village a few miles north of Toronto (now the
site of some of the most expensive property in Canada). Christie is tired
and leaves Luke alone to work.
Luke hopes to consolidate his learning and earn enough to set up on his own
elsewhere in Ontario, closer to his farming brothers. He rents a couple of rooms
from the doctor and is able to accommodate his father Thaddeus Lewis on his
occasional visits.
Morgan Spicer, the custodian of the local Strangers’ Burying Ground, is an old
friend of the family. He finds a grave disturbed, which raises the specter of
grave-robbing, an all too common crime much abetted by medical schools. But in
this case, the corpse is left behind and the grave was not fresh. Morgan is
baffled but the police are indifferent. When it happens a second time, Luke and
his father try to help solve the mystery. They wonder if Dr. Christie might be
behind it. What does he do all day?
Luke is lonely and he sorely misses his friend and lover, Ben, who died of
tuberculosis back in Montreal. Luke has managed to keep his sexual orientation
firmly in the closet, knowing it would be the end of his career and of his
relationship with his beloved father.
However, Luke’s gallant actions in rescuing the beautiful African, Cherub, from
American slave-traders, result in an unwanted invitation from a somewhat too
grateful society lady, Lavinia. Through her, he meets the clever Perry Biddulph
and is plunged into a torment of attraction and despair, compounded by the fact
that Lavinia’s husband is a scoundrel whom the Lewis’s have met before in the
previous novel.
Luke firmly resolves to avoid both Lavinia and Perry, but she uses his sexual
secret to blackmail him into finding the means to leave her husband. Most
problems are nicely resolved in the end. To say more would spoil it.
