The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America [Paperback]

New York TimesEditors Choice
Winner of the Bancroft Prize
Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize
Winner of the Gotham Book Prize
Winner of the New York Society Library's New York City Book Award
Journal of the American RevolutionBook of the Year
Winner of the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History
Winner of the James Bradford Best Biography Prize

Fascinating. . . . An excellent and absorbing work of social and cultural history.The New York Times Book Review

A riveting Revolutionary Era drama of the first published rape trial in American history and its long, shattering aftermath, revealing how much has changed over two centuriesand how much has not.

On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothelthe kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape.

Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanahs and her assailants lives. The trial exposed a predatory sexual underworld, sparked riots in the streets, and ignited a vigorous debate about class privilege and sexual double standards. The ongoing conflict attracted the nations top lawyers, including Alexander Hamilton, and shaped the development of American law. The crime and its consequences became a kind of parable about the power of seduction and the limits of justice. Eventually, Lanah Sawyer did succeed in holding her assailant accountablebut at a terrible cost to herself.

Based on rigorous historical detective work, this book takes us from a chance encounter in the street into the sanctuaries of the citys elite, the shadows of its brothels, and the despair of its debtors prison.Thlã;