Sarah Maria Cornell, an unmarried 30 year old factory worker in Fall River, Massachusetts, was found hanging near a haystack on a local farm in 1832.  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?  Sarah Maria Cornell had a local connection.  Her mother was Lucretia Leffingwell who grew up in Norwich, CT. 

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. 

Kate Winkler Dawson is a seasoned documentary producer and podcaster whose hit podcasts Tenfold More Wicked, Wicked Words, and Buried Bones appear on the Exactly Right network. She is the author of Death in the Air, American Sherlock, and All That Is Wicked, and is a professor of journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.

This event is co-sponsored with Waterford Public Library, Groton Public Library, Otis Library of Norwich, Public Library of New London, Bill Memorial Library and Lyme Public Library!