"The Hawthorne Inheritance" Author Kate Dike Blair on the Sunbury Press Show!

The sister of author Nathaniel Hawthorne drowns in 1852...but was it an accident?

Hawthorne's cousin, John Stephens Dike has left Massachusetts for Ohio and is a successful businessman. A traumatic past long behind him is brought back in 1883, through a bequest from his cousin, Elizabeth Hawthorne.

Within this, a collection of papers reveals a love affair between his father, the late John Dike and Hawthorne's younger sister, Louisa. They also raise disturbing questions surrounding Louisa's death by drowning in the 1852 Henry Clay  steamship disaster, all of which point to something more sinister.

Dike's own recollections of Louisa, the woman's diaries, and letters to a clergyman detailing revenge send John Stephen on a quest to find out what happened, and to attain some justice. On the way, he must come to terms with his past, his wicked stepmother, and what more he may find in "The Hawthorne Inheritance."

Kate Dike Blair goes into the history of her Hawthorne cousins and pays tribute in her new novel, which she discusses with Lawrence Knorr. A cousin by marriage to Nathaniel Hawthrone, she discovered her late father's reserach on their ancestors, which led to this novel.

Kate grew up in Middlebury, Vermont. Her father was owner of the Vermont Book Shop (among his best customers was a fellow named Robert Frost), and she clerked there wil earning a Diploma in Theater Arts from the Wykeham Rise School, and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Boston University. She has also a certificate in Medical assisting, and helped found the consulting firm, Health Resarch Associates in 1983.

An actor who has appeared in theater, film and television, Kate lives in Concord, Massachusetts.