Resurrection Men by T.K. Welsh

The review said this book was a challenging read, so I picked it up just to read a few pages to see what they considered challenging. I ended up reading the whole book even though I was in the middle of another novel at the time. Set in Victorian England, this is a rather dark "Oliver" tale. The main character is a young boy who is orphaned and placed on a ship as a cabin boy. When he breaks his leg, the captain has him tossed overboard since he is no longer useful. This cavilier treatment of the poor and unfortunate, particularly children, factors greatly into the plot of this story. Our young orphan survives his intended death and eventually ends up in London, part of a group of begger children, very much like Dicken's Oliver Twist. What makes this novel darker is the topic of stealing bodies from fresh graves (hence the title) which was an illegal, but not uncommon practice at the time as medical science was beginning to take off. The plot is fairly action packed, but cringe worthy on a number of occasions due to the gruesome topic. In terms of being challenging: the author has a great vocabulary and there may be a number of words the reader won't know, but most can be figured out using the context of the paragraph. I find it quite refreshing to be introduced to new vocabulary, so I enjoyed that aspect. (submitted by J.S, librarian)