A who’s who of 19th-century American authors who rented or visited Laurel Cottage includes Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, Nathanial Hawthorne and the English poet Matthew Arnold.
Set in Charleston, South Carolina, and based on the life of her great-grandfather Frank Dawson, Roxana Robinson’s use of published accounts, family journal entries and letters tells a compelling story of one man’s attempts to navigate the country’s new political, social and moral landscape.