The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon. Weidenfeld & Nicolson , 2007

The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon is an engrossing historical novel which juxtaposes London’s comfortable middle class world of the 1850s and the horror and suffering of the Russian battlefields of the Crimean War.

Mariella Lingwood is an accomplished young middle class woman who wants nothing more than to marry her fiancé Henry, who is a respected London surgeon and public health expert, and to spend her married life in pursuits acceptable to her social circle.
Mariella’s conventional and comfortable world is turned upside down when in the winter of 1854 Henry leaves for the bloody battlefields of Balaclava and Sebastopol to tend the injured, sick and dying of the Crimean war.
Henry is followed soon after by Mariella’s headstrong and unconventional cousin, Rosa who, unlike Mariella, wants more from life than Victorian convention allows women. Rosa travels to the Crimea determined, despite the appalling conditions, to nurse and save as many sick and injured as possible.

As she waits patiently at home, the war for Mariella is contained within the pages of her scrapbook, in her London sewing circle, and in the letters she receives from Henry. This all changes when the news that Henry is gravely ill with typhoid fever reaches her.
Accompanied by her maid, she hurries to Henry’s sickbed in Italy and there she discovers Henry is no longer the man she thought she knew and that Rosa has gone missing.
Mariella is driven to find Rosa so sets off to the carnage which were the battlefields of the Crimean war to search for her. Rosa’s possible whereabouts are surrounded by mystery and hearsay and in her quest Mariella ends up discovering more than she ever thought she would.
This novel is compelling and recommended reading for those who love romance and historical fiction with an edge. The description of battle and disease is not for the squeamish but for anyone interested in the world and society of England in the 1850’s it conveys that world in telling detail.
Roxanne