Welcome to my website exploring the back story of my historical novel
The Hawthorne Inheritance

In 1830, author Nathaniel Hawthorne’s younger cousin John Stephens Dike flees his abusive stepmother Priscilla Dike in Salem, Massachusetts and matures into a successful merchant and beloved husband in Steubenville, Ohio. Haunted only by occasional debilitating headaches, he considers his painful past to be safely behind him, until in 1883 an unexpected inheritance from Hawthorne’s older sister Elizabeth brings John Stephens’ nightmarish boyhood again to the fore.

The inheritance consists of a crate of shabby furniture and a collection of old documents detailing the love affair between John Stephen’s father John Dike and Hawthorne’s younger sister Louisa, as well as the unresolved mystery of Louisa’s death in the 1852 Henry Clay steamship disaster. John Dike’s post mortem treatise comprises a crisis of conscience regarding the affair and Louisa’s death. Louisa Hawthorne’s warm and witty diary entries celebrate the clandestine romance with her uncle-in-law while also describing her experiences with Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and the Hawthorne, Alcott, Emerson, and Peabody families. And calculating letters to a clergyman from the late Priscilla Dike detail her descent into hellish revenge.

Reading these documents will solve the mystery, but first John Stephens must face his phobias. With the help of a savvy Pittsburgh neurologist, John Stephens conquers his migraines. He and his nephew and lawyer Thomas S. Blair bring the murderers to justice. In the congratulatory aftermath, Tom and John Stephens discover a new manuscript by one of America’s most beloved 19th century authors, documenting for the ages John and Louisa’s star-crossed romance.