Barnes & Noble Digital Library

Murder, divine mandates, even spontaneous human combustion set the scene in a thrilling tale in one of America’s first novels.  Clara Wieland lives in virtual isolation in a small farming community in Pennsylvania.  Her quiet life turns horrific when she learns she must defend herself against the deadly intentions of her own brother, who believes God has instructed him to sacrifice his family.  Clara investigates utilizing distinctive Enlightenment scrutiny.  Are the voices her brother hears authentic, or the trickery of a visiting stranger with a penchant for ventriloquism?  By transplanting the English gothic novel to America and critiquing that literary form in its new setting, Charles Brockden Brown manages to create a text that is simultaneously a bizarre thriller, a novel of ideas, and a declaration of literary independence for the emerging American nation.