The Hearth Between Us

On School Street in Boston, two families live close enough that warmth crosses the wall between their chimneys. The Whitmores are Loyalist; the Conroys are Patriot. Their children move between the two kitchens without knocking. The argument between the men does not yet cost anything.

Edmund Whitmore, Anglican priest and rector of King's Chapel, is formed by the Daily Office, by Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living, by Cassian's Conferences in an Oxford folio annotated in two inks. His Loyalism grows from the same formation as his faith: lawful institutions, however slow, are the faithful alternative to rupture. It is Hooker, carefully held,* and also, though he cannot yet see it, the shape of a blind spot.

When the British Army occupies Boston, an officer of the 64th Regiment comes to Edmund's front parlor and asks about a leather-worker on Brattle Street. Edmund answers honestly. He does not lie. He does not volunteer what the officer does not already know. The Psalter is in his hands. The officer has enough. He leaves.

What follows is not punishment but consequence: a family displaced, a friendship gone cold, a chimney breast cold on one side. Edmund stays when the Loyalist clergy sail. He does not yet know what staying is worth.

The years between the siege and the Treaty of Paris are the novel's true subject, what two families do with time that cannot be undone, and how warmth, once lost, is rebuilt by hands that know what they broke.