AN UNEXPECTED THAW
A Novel
It is June 1906, New York City, at the dawn of the Gilded Age. Jack Davenport is a young lawyer who has been retained to represent Harry Kendall Thaw, a wealthy railroad heir, who has committed murder. Thaw’s sanity is in question and his future rests in the hands of his young starlet wife, Evelyn Nesbit, whose fidelity lies somewhere between two men: her husband and the man her husband killed, noted architect Stanford White.
Davenport is out of his league and questioning the direction of his own life. As he weaves his way through his inexperience and some of the most prominent and skilled lawyers of the time, Davenport learns about the fragility of life and of our collective human condition. An enraptured nation is about to watch Thaw’s trial unfold. Will Nesbit tell her own truth or the truth that her husband carefully curated for her? Nesbit’s decision reminds us that truth is malleable and that our choices matter, especially when we choose to live an inauthentic life.
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*Unofficial cover, designed by Katey Witz
Photo by Brown Brothers
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