Never Seen the Moon
THE TRIALS OF EDITH MAXWELL
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- CHF 14.00
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- CHF 14.00
Publisher Description
Never Seen the Moon carefully yet lucidly recreates a young woman’s wild ride through the American legal system. In 1935, free-spirited young teacher Edith Maxwell and her mother were indicted for murdering Edith’s conservative and domineering father, Trigg, late one July night in their Wise County, Virginia, home. Edith claimed her father had tried to whip her for staying out late. She said that she had defended herself by striking back with a high-heeled shoe, thus earning herself the sobriquet “slipper slayer.”
Immediately granted celebrity status by the powerful Hearst press, Maxwell was also championed as a martyr by advocates of women’s causes. National news magazines and even detective magazines picked up her story, Warner Brothers created a screen version, and Eleanor Roosevelt helped secure her early release from prison. Sharon Hatfield’s brilliant telling of this true-crime story transforms a dusty piece of history into a vibrant thriller. Throughout the narrative, she discusses yellow journalism, the inequities of the jury system, class and gender tensions in a developing region, and a woman’s right to defend herself from family violence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this meticulously researched book, freelance writer and journalist Hatfield dusts off the archives of a murder case that captured America's attention 70 years ago and breaths new life into it. Late one night in 1935, in Wise County, Va., a precocious young teacher named Edith Maxwell returned home to her abusive father, Trigg. Shortly afterwards, a neighbor overheard what sounded like a fight and went over to the Maxwell residence to check out the situation. He found Trigg lying unconscious on the kitchen floor. The next day, Edith and her mother were indicted for Trigg's murder, setting off a media frenzy reminiscent of some of the human interest stories of today-Jean Benet Ramsey, Terry Schiavo, etc. Like those stories, the Maxwell murder case quickly became fodder for both yellow journalism and tabloid sensationalism. A native of Virgina, and a one-time resident of Wise County herself, Hatfield details the Maxwell family's experiences in the years before Trigg's death, the progress of the court case (which eventually turned on a Virginia law that prohibited women from serving on juries) and Edith's rise to celebrity. Though the book's narrative is not particularly gripping, Hatfield does succeed at showing how a simple murder case in "'hard-core' Appalachia" reflected the larger social issues of the time. "Maxwell's is an American story," she argues, "one in which notions of women's equality and power, of the vast freedoms and terrible responsibilities given to the mass media as well as the integrity of our legal system, were severely put to the test."
