The Sinners All Bow

Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne

By: Kate Winkler Dawson

Narrated by: Kate Winkler Dawson

INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

One of Amazon’s Best History Books of January

Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and the first true-crime book published in America.

On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide...or something much darker? Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. The murder divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—but the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now.

In The Sinners All Bow, acclaimed true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson travels back in time to nineteenth-century small-town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Using modern investigative advancements—including “forensic knot analysis” and criminal profiling (which was invented fifty-five years later with Jack the Ripper)—Dawson fills in the gaps of Williams’s research to find the truth and bring justice to an unsettling mystery that speaks to our past as well as our present, anchored by three women who subverted the script they were given.

A story worth telling

I enjoyed the story but referring to Catherine Williams as a co-author and using “we” was confusing.

Wonderful storytelling!

Kate has a wonderful way of telling a story! She clearly did so much research on this historical crime case and intertwines modern approaches to solving murders.

On the edge of my seat

She did a very thorough investigation and does a wonderful job capturing your attention! I am looking forward to reading more of her books!

Excellently Written!

Very interesting - great story teller. I got lost a couple of times, but that’s what the rewind button is for.

2 authors, 100 years apart.

I liked the thorough research and attention to staying unbiased. Some repetition, but generally very engaging account of this historical tragedy.