The Orphanmaster

A couple of years ago I read Jean Zimmerman's The Women of the House:  How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty about the role female entrepreneurs played in the social and economic life of the colony of New Netherlands with a great deal of interest.  She has now written her first novel, The Orphanmaster (#206).

In her first work of fiction, Ms. Zimmerman has returned to the Dutch-controlled settlement of New Amsterdam in 1663.  Orphans have been going missing in the town, and the orphanmaster, Aet Visser, is not convinced when making his rounds that the orphan boy William Turner whom he placed with an English family, is the same boy he saw on his previous visit. Visser approaches newly arrived English visitor Edward Drummond to see if Drummond can determine whether or not the mute William is who the Godbolts claim he is, since a sizable inheritance is involved.  Visser is unaware that Edward is on a mission of his own for Charles II of England. 

When a young African girl goes missing, members of the Little Angola community outside New Amsterdam's palisade wall ask ambitious she-merchant Blandine van Couvering, herself an orphan, to find out what has happened to the missing child.  Edward and Blandine's paths cross in the course of their investigations, and as the disappearances mount, they pool their resources.  Can the culprit be human, or could it be the witika, the flesh-eating demon of Indian mythology who could be responsible? Between Indian incursions, the mounting threat of attack from the Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut English colonies, and the settlers' discontent with Petrus Stuyvesant, their own leader, matters are coming to a head in New Amsterdam.  The threats to both Edward and Blandine are very real...

I stayed up late reading The Orphanmaster because I found the twists and turns of the plot riveting.  With that said, a warning that this book is not for the squeamish.  The nature of the crimes themselves are highly unpleasant and graphically described.  For that reason, I'd rate this novel R instead of PG-13, but well worth reading if you like suspenseful well-researched historical fiction.