“...Gamble seduces with her rich, rollicking portrait of life in Jacksonian Ohio.” More»

“…Olivia is grave-robbing for the sake of science as the full breadth of her path opens up into the best kind of historical fiction. ‘The Eulogist’ winds its elegantly nuanced way through the immigrant experience in America, the complex rivalry and love of siblings, the challenges of being female, questions of religion and faith, slavery and abolition, and the ever-impossible balance between protecting one’s family and standing against societal wrongs — a story of the past that could not be more relevant today.” More»

“…a complex, lively and thought-provoking novel.” More»

“...‘The Eulogist’ presents an insistent vision with contemporary resonance: of women imprisoned in business-like marriages, denied personal agency; of revival camp preachers and followers confusing sensuality with spirit; of ancestors lost to potter’s fields, and other family bones dug up and reinterred in a fashionable cemetery designed by Frederick Law Olmsted; of human beings enslaved by chains of metal as well as law and hate, bound to embrace degradation to survive. Questions linger, as they often do in history books and family stories — as does that vision, well after the final page has turned.” More»

“Gamble’s third novel (after Good Family) concerns the lives of the Givens siblings, Irish immigrants who start over in 1819 Cincinnati. Olivia, the book’s strong-willed narrator, takes a shine to like-minded doctor Silas Orpheus, who admires her distaste for religion and allows her to surreptitiously dissect corpses with him. Olivia’s older brother, James, a successful candle maker who married rich, is initially reluctant to give his blessing for their marriage, as Silas’s disreputable brother, Eugene, sends a slave, Tilly, in lieu of a proper dowry. Olivia and Tilly become friendly, and Tilly helps her set up her own business doing hair. Olivia’s ambivalence toward slavery dissipates when Silas dies and she meets Eugene’s family on their Kentucky property. When Olivia enlists the help of her younger brother, Erasmus, now a Methodist preacher living on a river encampment, to help lead one of the slaves to freedom, Eugene retaliates by demanding that Tilly be returned. Since Ohio is a free state, an ill-fated trial ensues. Olivia and her family are thereafter pulled into the movement to smuggle slaves to freedom. Gamble adeptly chronicles Olivia’s transformation from a free-thinking but unaffected young woman into a determined widow who wants to indirectly avenge Tilly. This is a standout depiction of family dynamics, and will appeal to fans of fiction set in pre-Civil War America.”

“This is history at its liveliest pace, its most surprising turns, and its strangest twists in the narrow borderlands between antebellum north and south. The Eulogist challenges us to engage with both the living and the dead, the loved and the betrayed, the captive and the free. I am convinced by every irreverent, astonishing thread in this tale.”

—Linda Spalding, award-winning author of A Reckoning

“This gripping historical novel follows an Irish-American immigrant family as they search for their place in the free border state of Ohio — and the momentous choices they must each make in the face of the insidious reach of slavery. An essential read.”

—Lalita Tademy, New York Times bestselling author of Cane River, Red River, and Citizens Creek

“With more twists and turns than the Ohio River, The Eulogist brings us to the source of our
nation’s spirit, introducing us to characters we won’t forget, no matter whether we loathe them or love them, culminating on a pitch-perfect note: forgiveness.”

—Sally Cabot Gunning, author of The Widow’s War and Monticello: A Daughter and Her Father

“A captivating historical novel of family loyalties and conflict, and the borders between freedom and slavery, The Eulogist is a searing portrait of the Ohio Valley and its pre-Civil War turmoil with beautifully drawn characters. Highly recommended.”

—Paulette Jiles, author of Enemy Women and News of the World

“In the Givens siblings, Terry Gamble has created a vivid and fierce-souled trio who navigate some of the strongest crosscurrents of American history. This is an inventive, spirited, and captivating story.”

—Jessica Shattuck, New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle