Footprints in the Snow
In 1896, in Bear River, Nova Scotia, someone brutally murdered young Annie Kempton. Suspicion quickly focused on Peter Wheeler, who reported finding the body.
Local opinion, amplified by newspaper headlines, moved more quickly than legal processes to pin the guilt on Peter.
But a Halifax reporter covering the murder and the ensuing trial began to have doubts. Some of the forensic evidence did not seem to line up with witness statements, and evidence like lines of footprints in heavy snow.
Did Peter Wheeler really do it? Or was he found 'guilty by convenience'?
Reviewer comments
The courts and society applied Occam’s razor to thin and contradictory evidence, and hanged Peter Wheeler for the murder of Annie Kempton. In Footsteps in the Snow, Laura Churchill Duke stays Occam’s hand and probes the evidence once more, seeking signs of justice.
-- Ted Leighton, author of
A Ring of Justice and Knowers and Lovers
This compelling blend of historical documents and creative fiction breathes fresh life into a sorrowful story of brutal murder and dubious justice, exposing the profound human costs of leaping from biased assumptions to apparently certain truths. This is her best novel yet.
-- Tony Thomson, author of About Facebook details
6x9 inch paperback, 282 pages
ISBN 9781998149506