Indiana Gothic: A Story of Adultery and Murder in an American Family - Hardcover

A novelistic retelling of a family legend chronicles the ill-fated 1908 love affair between Indiana politician Ham Dillon and Allie Hale, his sister-in-law, an affair leading to the arrest and trial of Allie's husband for Ham's murder. 18,000 first printing. Tour.

tween fiction and nonfiction have become increasingly blurred, but in journalist Pope Brock's first book, about murder and adultery in his family, everything is true.

Journalist Pope Brock grew up ignorant of his family's most closely guarded secret. It was only when his great-aunt was dying that he learned the true circumstances surrounding the death of his great-grandfather Ham Dillon. An aspiring young Indiana politician, Dillon was shot to death in 1908 by his own brother-in-law, Link Hale--a man half-crazed with anger and grief over the fact that his wife, Allie, had just borne Ham a child. To add another twist, Allie Hale was more than just Ham Dillon's lover; she was also his wife's only sister.

Fascinated by this revelation, Pope Brock began his research. In Indiana Gothic, he tells the story of Ham Dillon with the sweep and power of a novel, re-creating the era in such vivid detail that we have the sensation of time travel. Readers first meet the young H