My Mistress' Eyes are Raven Black

by Terry Roberts

Overview

Winner of the 2022 ThrillerFest Award for Best Original Paperback Novel

"[An] impressive historical thriller." -Publishers Weekly

Ellis Island, 1920. New York Harbor's immigration and public health authorities are slowly recovering from the war years when a young, pregnant Irish woman disappears from the Isolation Hospital on Ellis Island.

Stephen Robbins, a specialist in finding missing persons, is assigned the case. Yet when he arrives at the isolation hospital, he discovers an inexplicable string of deaths and disappearances among immigrant patients...and a staff that seems to be hiding a chilling secret. Stephen finds an ally in Lucy Paul, an undercover nurse who is also investigating the mysterious incidents. Together, they begin to unearth a horrifying conspiracy masked beneath the hospital's charitable exterior. As Stephen and Lucy get closer to the truth and each other, they are swept directly into the danger haunting Ellis Island and become the next targets.

Amidst growing racial tensions in the wake of World War I, My Mistress' Eyes are Raven Black explores the disturbing lengths to which people will go to protect racial purity and condemn those they fear.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684426942
Publisher:	TURNER PUB CO
Publication date:	07/27/2021
Series:	Stephen Robbins Chronicles , #2
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Terry Roberts is the author of three celebrated novels: A Short Time to Stay Here (winner of the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Fiction and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); That Bright Land (winner of the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award, the James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); and most recently, The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival (a finalist for the 2019 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction).

Roberts is a lifelong teacher and educational reformer as well as an award-winning novelist. He is a native of the mountains of Western North Carolina--born and bred. His ancestors include six generations of mountain farmers, as well as the bootleggers and preachers who appear in his novels. He was raised close by his grandmother, Belva Anderson Roberts, who was born in 1888 and passed down to him the magic of the past along with the grit and humor of mountain storytelling.

Currently, Roberts is the Director of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife, Lynn.

Editorial Reviews

05/31/2021

Roberts’s impressive historical thriller (after The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival) follows a hotel manager who takes occasional assignments from the federal government’s Bureau of Investigation. In 1920, Stephen Robbins’s job managing New York City’s Algonquin Hotel grows dull, and his romantic relationship has gone cold. The Bureau sends him to Ellis Island to investigate the disappearance of a pregnant Irishwoman, Ciara McManaway, shortly after her arrival. Lucy Paul, a nurse from the American Medical Society conducting a probe of the island’s medical practices, tells Robbins several immigrants disappear at Ellis each week. Several staff members espouse the beliefs of the racial purity movement, and those who vanish (Jews, dark-skinned people, and unwed pregnant women like Ciara) are deemed by them as dangerous to America’s strength. At the morgue, Robbins finds corpses that are a shade of pink as if they have been boiled; after Lucy is endangered by what they find, Robbins realizes how strong their bond has grown. The novel’s fast-paced style echoes hard-boiled detective fiction, but its nuanced, thought-provoking portrait of the country’s hostility toward immigrants transcends the bounds of genre. It should widen Roberts’s fan base and renew interest in his debut novel, A Short Time to Stay Here, which also featured Robbins. Agent: Emma Sweeney, Emma Sweeney Agency. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"[My Mistress' Eyes are Raven Black] is pure entertainment-think Raymond Chandler or, perhaps, an Appalachian James Lee Burke. At the same time, the book confronts the reader with important questions about American immigration policies and race. Set at Ellis Island in the early 1920s, it is nonetheless sharply relevant in today's America." -Wayne Caldwell, Author of Cataloochee

"Terry Roberts has a knack for exploring the forgotten corners of American history-and then shining a light on the moral ambiguities he finds there. And he knows how to tell a story. This one has all the right ingredients: fascinating setting, winning characters, mystery, real suspense, and romance. I thoroughly enjoyed it." --Julia Franks, Author of Over the Plain Houses

"Terry Roberts' new novel is a literary thriller of the highest order: lyrical and suspenseful, with characters you will long remember. This is a heart-pounding, timely, and completely immersive read. It's also Roberts' finest hour." --Silas House, author of Southernmost

"In My Mistress' Eyes Are Raven Black Terry Roberts expands his fictional world as never before, from the mountains of North Carolina to Ellis Island, the heart and soul of America. Roberts tells a story of mystery, intrigue, murder, bigotry, and romance. With homage to the masters of crime fiction, Cain, Thompson, Chandler, and the Hammett of The Thin Man, this novel has thrilling action, and humor, as it addresses both the racism and humanity in our culture, in 1920, and the present." --Robert Morgan, Author of Gap Creek and Chasing the North Star

My Mistress' Eyes Are Raven Black is a suspenseful and original historical novel--an amalgam of twisted psychologies and cloak-and-dagger nostalgia with a teasing, passionate romance." --Foreword Reviews (starred review)

Creating a 'page-turner' has always seemed to me to require something beyond writing. An author may be an excellent wordsmith, have brilliant ideas, and yet never achieve the deep understanding of human psychology or the precise timing and rhythm that is needed to hook a reader. My Mistress' Eyes Are Raven Black is a true page-turner." --The Southern Bookseller Review

"[My Mistress' Eyes are Raven Black] illuminates stereotypes and assumptions about who deserved to immigrate to America during this dark chapter of history." --Booklist

"[An] impressive historical thriller." --Publishers Weekly

"In My Mistress' Eyes Are Raven Black, Terry Roberts expertly blends the thriller and romance genres to tell a timely story about the terrifying extent to which some people will go to assuage their fear of 'the Other.' I couldn't put this book down." --Washington Independent Review of Books

"Part detective story, part romance, part social commentary, the book builds to a satisfying conclusion and leaves the reader to ponder the larger societal issues." --Historical Novel Society

From the Publisher