The Halifax Connection.

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

This might seem to be another take on a cliché of romance fiction: boy from the highest level of British aristocracy and plucky servant girl fall in love. What makes this overlong novel a generally interesting entertainment is its time and place: the middle years of the American Civil War in Montreal and Halifax, where class distinctions, still sharp, were nonetheless being blunted. Marie Jakober, author of award-winning fiction about the Civil War, has brought to vivid life the atmosphere of nastiness and intrigue that then enmeshed Halifax. Many of its prominent citizens were openly sympathetic to the Confederacy, and many of these actively abetted the Southern cause. Daring Confederate blockade runners challenged the Union navy to purchase supplies in Halifax, and Nova Scotia merchants grew rich from the conflict. Confederate agents schemed about attacking the Union from Canada, seizing ships on the Great Lakes, for instance, and freeing Confederate prisoners of war from northern prisons.

More than the struggle between the states was at stake; the Confederate dream of a war between the Union and England could be realized by raids from British North America that England seemed powerless to stop, or which it appeared to encourage. Accordingly, the Crown engaged men like our protagonist to socialize with the Confederates in Canada and with their generous Canadian friends and discover their plots so that the governor general could inform Lincoln’s government. Jakober makes fine use of some of these incidents, particularly the dramatic saga of the Chesapeake, which thrust Halifax into the international spotlight and brought England as close as she came to war with the United States during that time.

And the romance? As if class differences were not obstacle enough, our spirited maidservant has strong personal reasons to wish for a Northern victory. What is she to do when she discovers that her beau is, apparently, energetically aiding the South? He is, of course, a counterfeit traitor, but entrusting her with the truth could lead to his brutal death in a foggy backstreet. Will their love weather the storm? Did Lincoln’s Union prevail?