THE MURDER OF SARAH GROSVENOR

A girl seeks justice for her dead sister against the puritanical culture that killed her in Withycombe’s debut novel.

In a small New England town in 1745, 13-year-old Rebecca Grosvenor knocks on the front door of the home of the justice of the peace for three days in a row before she is finally let in to see him—a courtesy never extended to women, let alone young girls. Rebecca has a reason for her urgency: She’s come to report a murder. To be sure, the murder occurred three years ago. The victim, Rebecca’s older sister, Sarah, had died shrouded in scandal, and the people of the town—even her own parents—had been all too happy to bury the truth along with poor Sarah. In the three years since, Rebecca has developed a passionate sense of justice and learned secrets that implicate certain men in her sister’s death. She’s finally developed a plan to force the justice of the peace’s hand or else throw their rumor-driven town into turmoil. Can Rebecca finally achieve justice for Sarah and for all women oppressed by the town’s patriarchy? Or will the system that killed her sister destroy young Rebecca as well? Withycombe’s prose perfectly captures not only the texture of the period, but the pugnacity of her protagonist: “I have lived my life as an agitator and a disgrace….Sadly, one who chooses to make absolutely everything a conflict often denudes their most important messages in the end.” Based on the true story of one of America’s earliest abortion cases, the short novel could not be more relevant in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson. In the tradition of Hawthorne and other early American writers, Withycombe’s novel resonates because it captures so well a community of neighbors and what happens when those neighbors are forced to reckon with the society they’ve built together.

A striking bit of fiction that proves a historical novel can be as timely as any other.