The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne (Unabridged)
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4.1 • 10 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER!
One of Amazon’s Best History Books of January
Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-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. The murder divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—but the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now.
In The Sinners All Bow, acclaimed true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson travels back in time to nineteenth-century small-town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Using modern investigative advancements—including “forensic knot analysis” and criminal profiling (which was invented fifty-five years later with Jack the Ripper)—Dawson fills in the gaps of Williams’s research to find the truth and bring justice to an unsettling mystery that speaks to our past as well as our present, anchored by three women who subverted the script they were given.
Customer Reviews
Intriguing Look at a Forgotten Case
I wasn’t really surpassed to find out just how much of Catherine Read Arnold Williams’s 19th century book was. It was really obvious from the beginning. I loved that Kate Winkler Dawson brought in a document examiner. It was interesting to see the weird and random ties to the Borden family (and just how messed up that family apparently was - think Lizzy Borden and her alleged ax). I liked that Dawson pointed out that we need to focus on victims more than the criminals and avoid propaganda when choosing true crime, but unfortunately, this book is mostly about Catherine Read Arnold Williams and far more secondarily about Sarah Maria Cornell the actual victim.
Excellent! Incredibly well done!
I’m always impressed with the quality of work by Kate Winkler Dawson. She is an excellent researcher and this book was especially impressive. This book was beautifully written, fascinating and ends with a message that we all need to hear. (Thank you, Kate.) I enjoyed the audiobook and breezed through it in three days. I highly recommend it!