SWEENEY ST. GEORGE, with her titian hair, Ph.D. in art history, and complicated parentage, is a vibrant and deeply attractive heroine. When one of her students is murdered, his body adorned with the nineteenth-century mourning jewelry her seminar has been studying, she is caught up in the search for his killer and his own family complications. The dead student was a Putnam, of the Boston and Newport Putnams, deeply tied to real estate, politics, and very old money. Although the story may move along at a leisurely pace, it is Sweeney who mesmerizes, as she explains the shift in American mourning practices and the making of hair mementos to wear in memory of the dead. She tries to explain herself, too, as family demons of suicide, alcoholism, and depression manifest themselves in other characters in this vivid drama and thus illuminate her own. An intelligent tale, leaving readers begging to know more.
— GraceAnne DeCandido
© 2006 American Library Association. All rights reserved