Three generations of Pyncheon sin have calcified into a rotting Salem mansion, its seven gables brooding over a family cursed by a stolen deed and a witch trial judge's cruelty. Hepzibah, the last of her line, opens a cent-shop in the front parlor, her faded gentility wracked with humiliation, while her brother Clifford languishes under the shadow of their ancestor's crimes. When young Phoebe arrives from the country, her fresh presence begins to dissolve the house's long paralysis, but the past won't stay buried. Judge Pyncheon, the family's prosperous current incarnation, looms with quiet menace, and the mansion's hidden secrets threaten to swallow what remains. Hawthorne builds his Gothic masterpiece with exacting prose that finds beauty in decay, weaving Puritan guilt into something that feels both ancient and startlingly contemporary. The novel asks whether the dead can ever truly release the living, or if some wounds only pass downward through time.
