| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown. The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler: A Story of Rape, Incest, and Justice in Early America. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2003. Pp. 388. $26.95.

This book by Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown tells the tale of Ephraim Wheeler's death after his conviction for the rape of his daughter in 1805, but, more importantly, it tells the story of his life. Indeed, this study in microhistory, inspired, the authors tell us, by Natalie Zemon Davis's Return of Martin Guerre (1983), unfolds in great detail the sober saga of Wheeler, a sad and impoverished man, his wife, Hannah Odel, a woman of mixed race, and his daughter Betsy (who was one of five children). The tale is set in Berkshire County in the western hills of Massachusetts, and the authors use it as a window into the history of family, community, and the judiciary in the early years of the republic. As the book unfolds, we learn much about a particularly troubled and dysfunctional family; about prominent men of the community, including the important Federalist jurist, Theodore Sedgwick; about crime, justice and punishment; and, most importantly, about a new culture struggling to define ideas of crime and justice at a singular and formative moment.

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