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Description of  Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime That Captivated a Nation

A master storyteller presents a riveting drama of America's first "crime of the century" from murder investigation to a church sex scandal to celebrity trial and its aftermath. In December 1832 a farmer found the body of a young, pregnant woman hanging near a haystack outside a New England mill town. When news spread that Methodist preacher Ephraim Avery was accused of murdering Sarah Maria Cornell, a factory worker, the case gave the public everything they found irresistible: sexually charged violence, adultery, the hypocrisy of a church leader, secrecy and mystery, and suspicions of insanity. Read more