Volunteer Profile :
Robin Ray
By Jennifer Johnston , Media & Communications Director
In 2008 , all roads literal and metaphorical converged to lead another extraordinary individual through the front gate and into the volunteer docent training program at Mount Auburn Cemetery . Robin Hazard Ray , a freelance writer and copy editor who is also a volunteer at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum , had visited Mount Auburn many times since moving to the area over 30 years ago but arrived at the volunteer training with a specific desire to learn and retain more knowledge of botany .
Robin , who enjoys gardening at her home in Somerville , had taken a number of botany classes over the years but wanted to forge a deeper connection with plants and trees in nature — something that ’ s hard to achieve in a short-term classroom setting .
Once at the Cemetery , Robin recognized numerous other Mount Auburn Cemetery connections to her many lifelong interests in history , geology , literature , civil rights , art , theater , and travel .
From “ Visionaries & Eccentrics ” to “ Rivals in Science ,” from “ Rocks and Minerals ” to the Gays and Lesbians of “ Pride Week ,” from “ Boston in the Footlights ” to “ Isabella Stewart Gardner ’ s Circle of Friends ,” from the “ Ice Age ” to “ Rome Cemetery ” and beyond , Robin has been able to create tours and programs with themes that connect her many lifelong interests with events , people , and landforms associated with Mount Auburn Cemetery .
Robin was then also able to take many of the topics most compelling to her both inside and outside the gates of Mount Auburn Cemetery and weave them into an absorbing antebellum mystery narrative entitled The Strangers ’ Tomb , which since coming out on December 15 , 2015 , has received multiple five-star reviews on Amazon . com :
Cambridge , Mass ., February – April 1858 . Civil war looms in the United States as scientific frontiers are rapidly expanding across the globe . Harvard botanist Asa Gray is discerning odd patterns among his new botanical specimens . Gray ’ s findings set him at odds with Louis Agassiz , the most celebrated man in American science .
Meanwhile , Sumner Bascomb , Superintendent of beautiful Mount Auburn Cemetery , finds his career on the line as things go seriously awry in the garden of the dead . An attack on a night watchman at the Cemetery coincides with the disappearance of Robert Claridge , an amateur botanist visiting Cambridge from South Carolina .
As Bascomb , Asa Gray , and a fugitive slave named Roxanne Jacobs try to figure out what is going on , bodies begin to pile up . A pregnant girl drowns herself in a frozen pond ; a Southerner is found in the Charles River estuary . Behind the Boston murders lie shadows of family secrets , lost siblings , and connections of blood , love , and vengeance .
One Amazon reader writes :“ What a wonderful and fun story ! The author manages to interweave history , particularly of the plight of slaves even in the North , mystery , botany and geology ( and a touch of gay rights ) into one fascinating and fun mystery ! The characters are lovely , you immediately fall in love or in hate with each of them and want to know what will happen to each of them next . I wanted to take the main character home with me . The solution is a surprise , as are some of the relationships , the setting at Mount Auburn Cemetery makes it extra fascinating , and , the resolution is dynamite !”
Robin is hard at work on the next installment of her Murder in the Cemetery mystery series . Once again to be set in Cambridge , the new book returns to the lives of several characters — including her fictional superintendent Bascomb and the redoubtable Roxanne Jacobs — in the aftermath of the Civil War . A surfeit of damaged soldiers creates an opportunity , or perhaps a diversion , for an unscrupulous killer .
If you have read The Strangers ’ Tomb and cannot wait for the next installment in Robin ’ s mystery series , be sure to sign up for her “ Art , Acquisition & Ambition ” tour at Mount Auburn on Sunday , September 25th at 1PM !
2016 Volume 2 | 21