"Michael White's new novel, The Garden of Martyrs, is everything a historical novel, or any novel, should be--rich in its characters and setting, compelling in its drama, and utterly true in its deepest emotions and ideology." Richard Russo, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Empire Falls
"What strikes me most about this wonderful novel by Michael White is the authenticity of place and character. It's not so much that White has done his homework about early 19th century anti-Irish sentiment and a gross miscarriage of justice (and he has!--the history is deeply felt, not merely reported); it's that the reader is transported in time so thoroughly that I, too, was walking the streets of Boston and Northampton. An absorbing and engrossing novel by one of our finest novelists today."Anita Shreve, author of The Pilot's Wife
"Painstakingly researched, expertly told, The Garden of Martyrs is a gripping, wonderful novel. Writing about one terrible injustice, Michael White brings to life the history of several cultures, and, in the process, takes us on a wise, honest, unflinching tour of the human soul." Roland Merullo, author of Revere Beach Boulevard
"A meticulously researched and richly drawn portrait of the lives of two Irish-Catholic immigrants and their priest. Michael C. White has delivered a historical novel of lasting contemporary resonance."A. Manette Ansay, author of Vinegar Hill
"The Garden of Martyrs is an absorbing, well-written, ultimately heartbreaking story. Michael C. White has given us a bracing and compelling novel of the other side of the immigrant experience." Kevin Baker, author of Dreamland and Paradise Alley
"The Garden of Martyrs is at once a moving, evocative historical novel, and a complex work of crime, courtroom, and social context. Michael C. White draws us into an early 19th century New England, where the tensions between Catholics and Protestants, between established Bostonians and new Irish immigrants, shape a terrible murder case, and the trial that results, yielding a book that is a potent combination of individual human tragedy, detailed legal intrigue, and historical drama." Perri Klass, author of Love and Modern Medicine : Stories
"In this powerhouse novel, master storyteller Michael C. White brings to urgent life an historic murder case rife with timeless moral questions. In his commanding narrative and rich visceral descriptions, White transports the reader to Boston, 1806: its backroads and churches and seats of power; even, in scenes of stunning immediacy, its gallows. Both sweeping and intimate, The Garden of Martyrs reaches deep inside three men as each seeks his separate peace."Elizabeth Searle, author of A Four-Side Bed