The Widows is deeply researched, and Montgomery’s writing carries with it the confidence of truth. Her only moment of rest is in this moment, staring at the top of the hill, bashed in like a skull, its crown of thorny headstones destroyed. She wonders if Marvena has a marker somewhere for her husband or if he’s memorialized only in memory. There was a marker for Daddy at Kinship Cemetery but nothing to bury. It’s a world in which things are equally dangerous and beautiful, where the landscape itself is a warning and an invitation.Īll she can think of is Daddy and how he, along with Marvena’s husband and several other men, had not been pulled out. Her prose is captivating and sharp, in tune both with the natural landscape and the human corruption that haunts the mountains. There are plenty of secrets in The Widows, and Montgomery creates a layered, rich mystery that makes the most of its historical setting. But Marvena has a past with Daniel, and as the two women grow closer, they must contend with the legacy of a man who kept secrets from both of them. Like Lily, Marvena is carrying on her husband’s legacy and is Rossville’s lead union organizer. She’s joined by Marvena, whose husband died in a mine collapse a year earlier and whose daughter, Eula, has disappeared.
Town officials appoint Lily the acting sheriff-a purely ceremonial position, they believe.īut unwilling to drown in grief, Lily sets about solving the mystery of her husband’s death. As the book opens, Daniel is killed during what should have been a routine prisoner transport. Lily’s husband, Daniel, is the sheriff for Kinship and the adjacent mining town Rossville, where his brother Luther runs the mine.
A warning, however obscure, could mean the difference between life and death.īut for Montgomery’s protagonists, Lily Ross and Marvena Whitcomb, there are no warnings that can prepare them for widowhood. Sudden cave-ins, the capricious whims of cruel mining companies, or an outbreak of disease could upend everything. It’s no wonder in the hardscrabble mining town of the 1920s, there was little that the workers and their families could control.
The cry of a hawk wheeling in the Kinship, Ohio sky, the ominous hoot of an owl in darkness-these omens and others guide Montgomery’s characters. The characters in Jess Montgomery’s debut novel, The Widows, wait for signs. Inspired by the true story of Ohio’s first female sheriff, The Widows by Jess Montgomery is a powerful debut about two women’s search for justice as they take on the corruption at the heart of their community.
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