Lentorama 2024: Clerical Crime Solvers

Day 21: Sister Rose Callahan

Sister Rose is an eldress of a Shaker community of North Homage in Kentucky. Her first mystery involves the death of a "winter Shaker," a man who appears to have claimed Shaker beliefs in order to find shelter. While Rose wants to find the killer in order to serve justice and protect her fellow Believers, she also wants to minimize how much gets known about the killing outside of North Homage, as the locals are already suspicious about the community.

Future cases see Rose walking that same tightrope, but often with outside help provided by Gennie Malone, an orphan who was brought up at North Homage but opted to leave the community as an adult.

The series is written by Deborah Woodworth, using both her personal experience of growing up near Shaker sites in southern Ohio and academic experiencce from holding a Ph.D. in the sociology of religion. 

I'd always thought of the Shakers as a New York and New England phenomenon, but I think that's because the communities in those areas lasted the longest (including the one still operating in Maine). A number of communities opened in Ohio and Kentucky at the start of the 19th century, but they all closed by the time of the Depression (which is true of most Shaker communities generally).