Hannah Wagner moves from her eastern city home to Lake Michigan in 1873, when her husband, Dr. John Wagner, is invited to become the town physician. Henry Abernathy, who made his fortune with timber felling and lumber yards, wants his old friend to prosper. THE LUMBER BARON’S WIFE is Kate Abernathy, and this is equally her story.

We also see a balancing and parallel story in the modern day, when a young couple move to the former lumber town. The white pine era is long gone, the trees stripped out in a mere forty years. Ashley and David Gilbert move to the former doctor’s house – their arguments seemed too prolonged, given that they could always move again. The architect who designed their quirky home also built the Abernathy mansion, and Ashley, a trained historian and museum staffer, joins a team of locals who are determined to restore the long-neglected mansion. A museum would provide jobs and a centrepiece for the town's history to be displayed.  

With each chapter of action in the past, there is an equal one about the restoration or the family life of the present inhabitants. This dual timeline device works very well by author Lynn Austin, who has written several books about the lives of women, and has created contrast.

David is a conservationist with a job in Michigan. The area, we know from the 1870s, was denuded of pine to build a city before and again after the Great Chicago Fire. People never learn, as is brought home when the wooden lumber town catches fire one terrible night. The ladies, Hannah and Kate, come into their own, tending to people who have lost everything. Kate has a shocking secret, which she imparts to Hannah almost at once – she was previously a burlesque dancer. The snobby women of town would never speak to her if they knew. That’s not all she hides – and the strange fact of Kate’s disappearance resonates through to the modern day, when Ashley is piecing together clues about her life and that of Hannah, the doctor’s wife. Women weren’t supposed to have jobs, but the ladies managed to do the needed work anyway. The contrast with Ashley is that she has to take a series of jobs to pay for their house and repairs.

THE LUMBER BARON’S WIFE by Lynn Austin bends and reflects the two stories to impart a great deal of history and make us care about the characters. I found the modern tale slightly weaker, though full of research. Anyone who enjoys women’s fiction with a Christian ethos may want to don their lumberjack shirt for this one.