Gallows Road - by Lisa Hall Brownell (Paperback)

About the Book

In the 1750s, a beautiful young servant is seduced by her slave master and gives birth to a child who dies in infancy. She is put on trial and condemned to death for murdering the child, a crime she swears that she did not commit.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

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