The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne by Kate Winkler Dawson

Kate Winkler Dawson is well-known in certain true crime circles. But now, she teams up with Catharine Read Arnold Williams to investigate the 1832 case of Sarah Maria Cornell. The issue with this team-up? Williams has been dead for over 150 years.

But first, the case. Cornell was tragically and horrifically found swinging from a noose on a New England farm. Originally assumed a suicide, the case of Cornell's death quickly grew complicated when correspondence and secrets were revealed. In Cornell's things was a note that read: "If I should be missing, enquire of the Rev. Mr. Avery of Bristol, he will know where I am."

Williams threw herself into the case, wholeheartedly defending Cornell against slander that wanted to label her a fallen woman, producing what many consider to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. However, while her passion is admirable, Winkler Dawson sometimes finds that it turned Williams away from the truth. Thus, while Fall River was an invaluable resource to Winkler Dawson--and perhaps an inspiration to Nathaniel Hawthorne when he wrote The Scarlet Letter--it could not be taken as gospel.

In The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne, Winkler Dawson gives Cornell her day in modern court. Meticulously, but narratively going over the evidence both as it was understood at the time and how it could be understood now, Winkler Dawson creates a well-balanced and examined argument about what truly happened to Cornell and who may have had a hand in it.

For those interested in true crime as a genre as a whole, the case of Cornell is one that should be explored. It is vital to the history of the genre itself and there is no better guide than the team of Williams and Winkler Dawson.

The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne by Kate Winkler Dawson, G.P. Putnam's Sons