The Wages of Sin

First-year medical student Sarah Gilchrist, one of her school's 12 newly admitted women, spends her off-duty time treating the poor at an infirmary nestled in the dark, damp backstreets of 1892 Edinburgh. Disease, prostitution, gambling, and drugs flourish here, but Sarah finds her calling in helping young women caught in the depths of poverty. In school one day, Sarah recognizes the body of Lucy, one of her patients, on the dissecting table. Certain that Lucy was murdered, Sarah sets out to discover the killer. She takes to the streets to investigate and learns that her professors indulge in the vices of the city. As Sarah begins to make connections, she gets into trouble, but her past haunts her and compels her to seek answers despite possible repercussions. Welsh examines poverty's harsh effects, a strongly patriarchal society, demanding cultural expectations, and the consequences for 19th-century women who wanted to forge a path of their own. Balancing her medical studies, her formidable relatives, and her work in the infirmary with her obsession with identifying Lucy's murderer, Sarah is stretched to the limit. This gripping, thought-provoking historical mystery will open teens' eyes to the reality of life for independent women in the 1800s.