About this item
Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, andtrue-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and the first true-crime book published in America.On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah's death a suicide...or something much darker? Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River.
About the Author
Kate Winkler Dawson joined the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism as an associate professor of practice in 2009. Before then, she was on the faculty of Fordham University's Marymount College for two years. A seasoned documentary producer, news writer and TV news producer, her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, United Press International in London, WCBS News, ABC News Radio, Fox News Channel, "PBS NewsHour" and "Nightline." She's on the board of the Texas Center for Actual Innocence and lives in Austin, Texas with her family. Her debut book was Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City."
