THE WOLVES OF ANDOVER by Kathleen Kent, 2010.
Kent's first book, The Heretic's Daughter, was a much better read for me than this one. Here she relates the backstory of Thomas Carrier (aka Morgan) and Martha Allen, both of whom were major characters in the previous novel. Set during 1673, Thomas is indentured to a farmer cousin of Martha's near Billerica, Massachusetts. Martha meets Thomas and comes to know and love him while she is attending her cousin Patience's difficult pregnancy. Unknown to Martha (and most of the others) for most of the book, is that Thomas is a regicide, that he in fact wielded the axe that decapitated King Charles I in 1649 under Cromwell's orders. Along with other participants in the execution, Thomas escaped to Puritan New England and has been living there under a different name and has been protected from those who seek to avenge the dead king. However, King Charles II, bent on rounding up those who murdered his father, has sent more assassins after the regicides, and once Martha learns Thomas' secret, she realizes that she and all those near Thomas are also in danger. Part mystery, part romance, and part thriller, Kent does an excellent job with historical details, showing the dirt and filth, the political turbulence and violence, everyday customs, hunting, threshing fields, fashions, foods, and hard life during the seventeenth century. As interested as I was to know more about Thomas and Martha and their story, I found this rather tough going--just not as compelling as their lives during the high drama of the Salem witch hysteria. Simply a personal preference, in reading this it felt like something was lacking in this effort. Not a bad read, just not as good as it should have been.