Set in the late 1800s, this historical fiction addresses the relatively well known issue of medical murder (physicians procuring bodies for medical research through questionable means) and exposes the carefully guarded historical fact of hysterical orgasm (that women diagnosed with hysteria were treated with orgasm or “paroxysm,” achieved via vibratory therapy, water jet massage, and/or manual stimulation).
Iowa and Oregon provide the settings for the chronicles of a young physician and a serial killer whose paths are hopelessly and tragically linked. Tristan Andersen becomes a doctor in spite of his family’s desire for him to work his family’s Iowa farm. Roy, who at first is seen as merely providing physicians with corpses, is too adept at murder for it to be coincidence. He is, in fact, a serial killer. Perhaps, even, the icon of the infamous White Chapel secret society.
This story includes classical elements of: romance; suspense; medical mystery/case solving; and intertextual references to: Van Gogh, Jack the Ripper/White Chapel of Chicago, The Schoolhouse Blizzard, Ernest Duchesne (discovery of Typhoid Bacilli reaction to Penicillin), Ernest Erlich’s “Magic Bullet”/immunology, homeopathy/naturopathy, and more.
