Fran 's Reviews > The Lost Apothecary

"Fancy joining us for mudlarking?" These words would soon jump start Caroline Percewell's unfulfilled dreams of pursuing a graduate degree and researching obscure documents, rare books and perhaps propel her to further exploration of past centuries. Caroline had expected to celebrate her tenth anniversary with her husband James in London. While James had been climbing the corporate ladder with the goal to become a partner in his firm, Caroline's happiness had played second fiddle. First love, then marriage, now betrayal! James's affair had Caroline reeling. Why not go mudlarking?

"The Thames runs straight through the city of London...Little remnants of history...can be found right here in the mud...countless souls scrounging about in the river for something old, something valuable...". Caroline spotted a translucent sky blue glass, "very much like an apothecary's vial...the glass...quite uneven in places...this glass object-delicate and yet still intact-somewhat like myself...the discontent within me seizing the possibility of adventure, an excursion into my long-lost enthusiasm for era's past". First stop: The British Library!

1791. Netta's story. "I was wonderfully in love. The first betrayal. The first victim. The beginning of a stained legacy. I was not just an apothecary, but a murderer. A master of disguise...". In an outer room, only an old grain barrel, a hiding place for letters with requests from women. "My shop was buried deep behind a cupboard wall at the base of a twisted alleyway in the darkest depths of London...This was my mother's shop long before it was mine. The tinctures she dispersed were meant only for good: benign herbal remedies...but beneath the ink strokes of my register hid betrayal, anguish...and dark secrets...My precious calfskin register- a record of life and death; an inventory of the many women who sought potions from here, the darkest of apothecary shops." "Betrayal was why I began to dispense poisons...to carry the secrets of these women, to record them in my register, to protect and aid them."

In present day London, Caroline searched the British Library databases for information on the vial, hand etched with a tiny bear, the vial unearthed from the muddy Thames. She hoped to time date this item which perhaps was centuries old.

Unfolding in a dual timeline, present day and the years between 1791-1816, the narrators Nella, Eliza, and Caroline tell their stories. Caroline tries to piece together the life of Nella, the apothecary who operated a shop in a back alley two hundred years ago. At the shop, Nella conversed with twelve year old Eliza, who expressed an interest in becoming an apothecary apprentice. Nella explained that she never rested. "Something is always steaming, brewing, stewing, soaking at all hours of the night" and that this has taken a toll on her life. Eliza, a curious, observant, wide-eyed child proved to be a challenge to Nella as apothecary, a brewer of secrets, and a friend to all women.

"The Lost Apothecary" by Sarah Penner was a fascinating melding of the secrets of a hidden apothecary shop and the reemergence of a talented researcher's quest and pursuit of higher education and her search to rediscover herself as well as hidden treasures from the past. I highly recommend this historical fiction read.

Thank you HARLEQUIN/Park Row for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.