Newes From the Dead by Mary Hooper
4Q 3P; Audience: J/SThe freaky thing about this book is that it's based on a true story.
In the case of Anne Greene, saying yes was a seriously bad decision. She wound up pregnant and discovered far too late that everything she'd been told was a pack of lies. He didn't care for her, and he certainly had no intention of marrying her. She tried to hide the pregnancy, but she couldn't hide the evidence when the baby is stillborn. The circumstances were ripe for a charge of infanticide. What a tidy way for the man's family to get rid of Anne for good. For killing her baby, Anne was sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead. And she was hanged. And she was declared dead. Her body was then given to doctors so their students could dissect her body for medical study.
The problem was, she wasn't dead.
The story is told from both Anne's point of view and that of Robert, one of the medical students. Yes, I've told you some of Anne's story already. But I haven't told it all. It was chilling to read her part of the story knowing that the first incision is only moments away. Did they make that first cut? When did the doctors discover that she was alive? What was her reaction when she realized where she was and what was about to happen? What was it like to be one of those medical students at a time when people knew so little about the human body? What went through his mind? And most of all, how did Anne's life change when she literally came back from the dead in a time when superstition and religion held sway and science was in its infancy?
The problem was, she wasn't dead.
The story is told from both Anne's point of view and that of Robert, one of the medical students. Yes, I've told you some of Anne's story already. But I haven't told it all. It was chilling to read her part of the story knowing that the first incision is only moments away. Did they make that first cut? When did the doctors discover that she was alive? What was her reaction when she realized where she was and what was about to happen? What was it like to be one of those medical students at a time when people knew so little about the human body? What went through his mind? And most of all, how did Anne's life change when she literally came back from the dead in a time when superstition and religion held sway and science was in its infancy?
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