Gallows Road bookcover

Gallows Road

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Description

A beautiful young servant is condemned to death for a crime that she swears she did not commit. Inspired by true events in 1750s Connecticut, Gallows Road takes readers on a harrowing journey of love, betrayal, and injustice.

Chafing against the strict confines of her life as an indentured servant, Mercy Bramble finds herself in a destructive relationship with her master, leading to her pregnancy. The mysterious death of her newborn puts Mercy's life in the hands of a jury, while three clergymen fight to save her soul. Raising issues of patriarchy, literacy, religious dogmatism, and capital punishment, Gallows Road builds to a climax that Kirkus Reviews calls "a nail-biter all the way."

Indentured servants - white or Native American men and women who often worked alongside black slaves - were forbidden to marry during the seven years they were bonded to service. Illegitimate births were common, and unwed mothers faced heavy fines and extended servitude. Set in a multiracial household in colonial New England, Gallows Roadsheds light on an often-forgotten chapter in America's past.

Product Details

PublisherELM Grove Press
Publish DateApril 02, 2022
Pages280
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9781940863160
Dimensions8.5 X 5.5 X 0.6 inches | 0.8 pounds
BISAC Categories: Popular Fiction

About the Author

LISA HALL BROWNELL, a fiction writer and editor, believes that stories have the power to connect one person to another, and past to present. She graduated from Brown University, and earned an M.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing from San Francisco State University. Now a freelance writer, she lives in southeastern Connecticut. She has written two novels, as well as several screenplays and short stories. A former media director for Mystic Seaport Museum and director of publications for Connecticut College, Brownell edited and wrote for an award-winning magazine with 30,000 readers. A member of the Mystic Writers, she recently helped to launch the group's website and blog. https: //mysticwriters.org

Reviews

Traversing the same rocky footpaths as Nathaniel Hawthorne's quintessential New England novel, The Scarlet Letter, Lisa Hall Brownell's Gallows Road tells an early 18th-century story of love, sex, heartache, and hypocrisy. Yet Brownell's Mercy Bramble is no opaque and respectful Hester Prynne. Mercy is a feisty, unschooled, and outspoken heroine who challenges the morals and mores of the staid, self-satisfied community that seeks to victimize her. I felt a near-magnetic pull into the pages of this humane, character-driven novel. I suspect you will, too."

- Wally Lamb, author of six N.Y. Times bestselling novels including I Know This Much Is True and She's Come Undone

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