UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Book Jacket: "Murdered by His Wife" by D. Navas

Deborah Navas

An absorbing tale of crime and punishment in eighteenth-century Massachusetts

"This well-written book exposes the harsh realities of life in revolutionary New England."

Choice

"[This history] of the murder of Joshua Spooner in Brookfield, Massachusetts, in March 1778 and the execution of his wife Bathsheba and three accomplices four months later recounts a case as sensational to contemporaries as the O. J. Simpson trial was to us. . . . Bathsheba found herself trapped in a loveless marriage to an abusive husband. Becoming desperate after discovering she was pregnant by a 17-year-old Continental soldier whom she had boarded during his trip home, Mrs. Spooner recruited two British Army deserters to help kill her husband. . . . Navas provides insights into Bathsheba's psychological state and also considers the political, cultural, and gender prejudices that prevented the state from staying her execution until she could give birth. The author also provides the full texts of newspaper accounts, trial records, and other primary sources dealing with the crime. This readable book introduces an infamous local episode to a wider popular readership."

Virginia Quarterly Review

"Skillfully evokes the heady American late 18th century, a time of revolutionary fervor, desperate militarized violence, and incipient lawlessness. . . . Navas brings an acutely contemporary critical eye to this lost era, revealing nuances of gender roles, piety, patriotism, and class within the actions of both killers and prosecutors."

Kirkus Reviews

"Navas has produced a little gem—rock hard and glistening. Her story itself has great intrinsic fascination (sex, violence, betrayal, even a kind of 'redemption'). But her telling of the story is best of all: so simple, so direct, so utterly compelling."

John Demos, author of The Unredeemed Captive

An independent scholar, Deborah Navas is author of a short story collection, Things We Lost, Gave Away, Bought High and Sold Low, and won the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award and the New Hampshire Writers Project Emerging Writer Award.

American History / Women's Studies / New England
224 pp., 12 illus.
LC 99-15160
$22.95t paper, ISBN 1-55849-334-4
September 2001
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