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    The Return of the Raven Mocker
    Unavailable
    The Return of the Raven Mocker
    Unavailable
    The Return of the Raven Mocker
    Ebook267 pages9 hours

    The Return of the Raven Mocker

    By Donis Casey

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    "Vividly rendered and psychologically astute, this somewhat transparent puzzler provides an unusually immersive perspective on familiar historical territory." —Booklist

    World War I is raging in Europe, but as the deadly influenza pandemic of 1918 sweeps like a wildfire through Boynton, Oklahoma, Alafair Tucker is fighting her own war. Her daughter, Alice, and son-in-law, Walter Kelley, have both come down with the flu, and Alafair has moved into town to care for them after quarantining her young children at their sister's farm. Boynton as a whole isolates itself like an old English plague village, discouraging anyone from coming into town and the residents from traveling outside. A new doctor applies science to treating the stricken, but Alafair applies all she knows about hygiene, nutrition, and old and trusted country remedies. Unable to aid her sons and sons-in-law fighting overseas, this is danger she can combat.

    One autumn afternoon, screams coming from next door alert Alafair that Alice's neighbor, Nola Thomason, and her son Lewis have suddenly and unexpectedly succumbed. Yet there is something about the way the pair died that causes Alafair to suspect their deaths were due to poison rather than to influenza. The epidemic is so overwhelming that it is many days before the only doctor left in town can confirm Alafair's suspicions; neither Nola nor Lewis died of the flu. The only witness to their deaths, twelve-year-old Dorothy Thomason, a special friend of Alafair's daughter, Sophronia, is so traumatized that she is rendered mute. Were Nola and her son murdered, and if so, why?

    The usual motives for murder are greed, or jealousy, or hatred. Or could it be, as Alafair fears, that the Raven Mocker, the most dreaded of the Cherokee wizards or witches, the evil spirit who takes to the air in a fiery shape to rob the old, the sick, and the dying of their lives, is hunting victims and bringing misery to the innocent?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSourcebooks
    Release dateJan 3, 2017
    ISBN9781464207570
    Unavailable
    The Return of the Raven Mocker
    Author

    Donis Casey

    Donis Casey is an award-winning author whose first novel The Old Buzzard Had It Coming was named an Oklahoma Centennial Book in 2008. She has twice won the Arizona Book Award and has been a finalist for the Willa Award. A former teacher, academic librarian, and entrepreneur, she currently resides in Tempe, Arizona.

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    Reviews for The Return of the Raven Mocker

    4.5/5

    10 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I will always-- always-- enjoy an Alafair Tucker novel written by the talented Donis Casey, and I did enjoy The Return of the Raven Mocker, but it's not the strongest book in this wonderful series. It is more historical fiction than historical mystery, with Casey doing a powerhouse job of showing the effects of the flu pandemic in Boynton, Oklahoma. For instance, despite people's best efforts to quarantine the entire town, people were so desperate for news from their men fighting overseas that they were willing to risk infection and even death just to get the mail. Casey also does a wonderful job showing how old wives' tales and folk remedies worked side by side with modern medicine to fight influenza. In fact, I was so exhausted by the endless hours of nursing Alafair and her daughter Martha did that I fell for every murder suspect put before me until just before the end (just in time to make me feel smart).In a book filled with sickness, despair, and exhaustion, Alafair's young daughter Sophronia was just about the only bright spot in the entire book. The Return of the Raven Mocker may not be a completely satisfying mystery, but it is a worthy addition to the series and continues the storylines of characters fans have come to love.
    • 5/5
      The book was sent to me by the publisher Poisoned Pen Press via Net Gallery. Thank you.This wonderful novel is a vivid account of the 1918 influenza pandemic in a small farming community in Oklahoma. Donis Casey writes period mysteries with Alafair Tucker, the mother of ten children, as her detective. So The Return of the Raven Mocker does have a murder for Alafair to solve, but it takes second place to the account of the influenza which devastates the town and surrounding farms in Bonyton, Oklahoma.It is a layered story. There is the influenza impact itself with a conflict between the old ways of folk medicine and the newer, more scientific methods of attempting to deal with the virus. There is the unity of the community where volunteer workers try to help the afflicted, from the local Red Cross women who work themselves to the point of collapse to the owner of the local restaurant preparing and delivering meals to families with everyone too sick to cook. Then there is family. Alafair leaves her farm to care for her daughter and husband who almost die while her younger children and grandchildren are quarantined at the farm of another daughter. Her husband and the farmhands he employs at the home farm are being seen to by yet another grown daughter and her husband who move in to make sure meals are made and the farm workers have all they need. Everyone in the family and the community pulls together to fight the disaster.And disaster it is. Casey is eloquent in her portrayal of the events. Entire families are wiped out. The sheriff has to contact distant relatives too many times to try to keep orphaned children from being placed in institutions. The visiting doctor has to tell parents that there is no hope and that the best they can do is comfort their dying children. And the deaths are horrible to watch as the victims drown in their own fluids. And just when there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel, the victim could relapse or the caregiver could succumb.And there is hope and faith, more goodness than evil. Finally, as the epidemic fades, the church bells chime the end of World War One and the beginning of a new era.The characters are so real, from the old man with dementia who still loves children and animals to the young doctor who dismisses homemade medications out of hand. This is a strong novel with a murder mystery included. Very highly recommended.