Baehr, Christina. Wormwood Abbey. (The Secrets of Ormdale, Book 1). Independently published, 2023.

I’m generally skeptical about self-published books by debut authors. Even though I believe the publishers are “gate-keeping” to keep out authors who write good books free of progressive social agendas, the publishing system with its editors and agents and extensively vetted authors does serve a purpose, or at least it should. These systems were put in place to make sure that only the best books got published, but it’s becoming the case that only the politically progressive books are accepted for publication.

At any rate, I kept seeing references here and there to Christina Baehr’s Secrets of Ormdale series about a family of dragon keepers in late Victorian (1899) England, and finally I took the bait and ordered the first book in the series. I have only read that first book, and I can’t vouch for the rest of the series. Nevertheless, I immediately ordered the other four books in the series after reading Wormwood Abbey. It’s a good book, and I expect it to be a good series.

Christina Baehr describes herself at her website as a “cozy Gothic novelist” and in her newsletter as a mother of ten who lives and works in Tasmania. However, The Secrets of Ormdale books are set in Yorkshire, not on the island of Tasmania in Australia. Edith Worms, a clergyman’s daughter and an author herself (of detective novels), travels from London with her parents and younger brother to Wormwood Abbey, the ancestral estate of her father’s estranged family. Father’s older brother has died suddenly, and the estate is now entailed on Father, an inheritance he and the Worms family have no wish to take up. However when the family arrive at Wormwood Abbey, they find that it’s not so easy to give up an inheritance or to ferret out its secrets.

Beginning on the first page, Ms. Baehr makes all sorts of literary and historical allusions and references, to everyone from Charlotte Mason to Jane Austen to the Bronte sisters to Chesterton to many other authors and poets and cultural icons. The references are not pretentious, but they are fun. “Mother also looked up from her new issue of The Parents’ Review (April, 1899).”

The vocabulary and speech patterns in the book could be considered a bit pretentious, but then again, maybe they really talked–and thought– like that in 1899, especially if the narrator had a Charlotte Mason education, as is implied in the story. And the ideas in the books are lovely and inspiring.

“Mother would say that every day is a miracle. That it is we who have grown so dull and stupid that we do not see it, expecting the miracles to go on and on, without recognizing them for what they are.”

When Edith and her brother are trying to find their way out of a cavern: “We sang the Doxology a few times, laughing a bit over the line ‘all creatures here below.’ Then we sang ‘Marlborough Has Gone to Battle.’ This did the trick nicely. I found it impossible to think of wolves leaping on me in the darkness when loudly singing a nursery song.”

“All of God’s creatures are beautiful and useful, though not all of them are pleasant.”

The story includes a touch of romance, with a tall, dark, and handsome neighbor thrown into the mix of characters. But the “romance” is very chaste and completely unrealized in this first book. I found a couple of typographical errors, but the writing itself is good, with rich language and lots of literary allusions, as I mentioned before. The novel is well-plotted and ends in a satisfactory manner, but also leaves the reader with an appetite for more. Indeed, Wormwood Abbey is an excellent beginning to a promising fantasy series—with dragons! And as an added bonus, if you go to Christina Baehr’s website and sign up for her newsletter, she offers to send you the first few chapters of Wormwood Abbey so that you can test to see if the book is right for you before you buy. Who could ask for a better deal?