Description
Book Synopsis"Killed Strangely is an engaging read that will entrance and inform readers who are at once murder mystery and history buffs."—Common-Place
Trade ReviewKilled Strangely is an engaging read that will entrance and inform readers who are at once murder mystery and history buffs.
-- Cornelia Hughes Dayton * Common-Place *
A satisfying account of the mysterious death in 1673 of a 73-year-old Rhode Island matriarch (and ancestor of Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell University), for which her son, Thomas Cornell was hanged. Rebecca Cornell was at home with her family—including 46-year-old Thomas, still dependent on mom's largesse—but remained in her chamber at suppertime; while the others dined, she died and her body caught fire from the hearth. But the author.... doesn't stop there, and subsequent chapters about Rhode Island society of the time will be of most interest to scholars and local historians.
* Publishers Weekly *
For sleuthing historian Elaine Forman Crane in Killed Strangely, the jury's 'willingness and ability to reconcile medieval superstitions with modern evidentiary standards makes the Cornell case a striking example of the friction between traditional Christian folklore and evolving common law.' And Crane's examination of the case in the context of its place and time—1673, 19 years before the Salem witch crisis—is a fine example of the 'microhistory' genre. She found it an opportunity to study 'the prescriptive values of Puritan society' and 'the ways in which people... actually lived out their lives.
* Boston Globe *
This book is brief and compulsively readable, the kind of work tailor-made to grip and hold the imaginations of undergraduates in early American survey courses everywhere.... Crane's use of material culture is also marvelously adept.... Her book succeeds nicely as a mystery story and admirably as a teaching tool.
-- Nicole Eustace * Reviews in American History *
This excellent book by a Fordham University history professor presents a true 1673 murder mystery.... This well-written, integrated, historical perspective on this mystery fascinated me. Think of it this way—when was the last time you heard about the testimony of a crime victim's ghost being admissible in a court of law?
* Virginia Quarterly Review *
Well written, thorough, scholarly, and entertaining. Summing Up: Recommended.
* Choice *
