Doctor Grimshawe's Secret — a Romance
1882
In this strange, haunting romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne conjures a world where children play among headstones and an eccentric old doctor guards secrets in a dust-choked house bordering the cemetery. Doctor Grimshawe, part healer, part outlaw, keeps his charges, the lively Ned and his delicate sister Elsie, in a home so thick with cobwebs it resembles duskier upholstery, while beyond the back door lies the graveyard where they chase butterflies among the graves. The doctor maintains an air of dangerous mystery: his past is obscured, his healing methods unconventional, and a formidable spider haunts the house like a dark familiar. The children sense there is more to their origins than their guardian will reveal. Written in Hawthorne's final years and published posthumously, the novel carries an unfinished quality that suits its persistent air of enigma. This is Hawthorne at his most darkly atmospheric, exploring identity and belonging through a lens both supernatural and unsettlingly psychological.
