Author and Genealogist Maureen Wlodarczyk weaves a work
of historical fiction inspired by the true stories of the owners of three 1850s
copies of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The
Scarlet Letter: a Mississippi boy of
thirteen who, along with his two brothers, is destined for the battlefields of
Virginia during the Civil War; a New
England sea captain’s daughter, newly-married and living in Alexandria,
Virginia when that war breaks out; and a transplanted Virginia man living in
New Orleans who must flee the Union occupation there. Their family stories converge over the
ensuing decades as their copies of The
Scarlet Letter and their lives intersect in one woman who will tell their
tales and then reveal the secret that defined her own life.
