Description
A gloomy New England mansion provides the setting for this classic exploration of ancestral guilt and its expiation through love and goodwill of succeeding generations.Nathaniel Hawthorne drew inspiration for this story of an immorally obtained property from the role his forebears played in the 17th-century Salem witch trials. Built over an unquiet grave, the House of the Seven Gables carries a dying man’s curse that blights the lives of its residents for over two centuries. Now Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, an iron-hearted hypocrite and intellectual heir to the mansion’s unscrupulous founder, is attempting to railroad a pair of elderly relatives out of the house. Only two young people stand in his way–a visiting country cousin and an enigmatic boarder skilled in mesmerism.Lexile Measure:/ 1320LCopyright 1999. 224 pages, paperback, 5 by 8 inches, middle school/high school.
