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| Category: Fiction:Historical:Gilded Age |
(requires Adobe Reader)
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| About the Book | |
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In the declining New England town of Blitheborough, Charles Fulbright has outlived nearly everyone he loved. Once a prosperous mill owner and respected citizen, the aging widower has lost his fortune, his standing in the community, and, most painfully, his beloved wife, Veronica. All that remains is a promise he made at her deathbed: the magnificent marble Angel of Mourning must forever watch over her grave. But the Angel has drawn the attention of Edward Churchgrim, the embittered son of the sculptor who created it. Recently released from prison, Edward returns to Blitheborough claiming the statue as his rightful inheritance. Frail but resolute, Charles refuses to surrender it, even as the townspeople who once admired him continue to blame him for the closing of the mill that had sustained their community. As Charles struggles to protect the Angel, strange occurrences begin to disturb the quiet town. A mysterious light appears in the woods. An old legend of a lone wolf resurfaces. Memories of long-ago disappearances return to haunt Charles, along with troubling secrets surrounding generations of the Churchgrim family. And into his lonely life comes Muriel, an enigmatic young woman whose extraordinary compassion and uncanny knowledge seem to transcend ordinary explanation. Guided by Muriel through memories of love, loss, art, faith, and the choices that shaped his life, Charles begins to question the boundary between what he remembers, what he imagines, and what may exist beyond the visible world. His final struggle becomes more than a contest over a work of art: it is a test of whether a promise can endure beyond death and whether love can guide a soul through grief toward peace. Set in the Gilded Age and written in a style inspired by the American Romantic and Gothic traditions, The Angel of Mourning is a literary Gothic novel of devotion, loss, memory, and the mysteries that linger between this world and the next.
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| About the Author | |
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David Sciuto is a longtime college instructor and lifelong student of nineteenth century literature. His fiction draws on New England history, the Gothic tradition, and the works of Hawthorne and other American Romantics. The Angel of Mourning is his first novel. |