Beth De Wolfe's Murder of Mary Bean featured on Seattle Post Intelligencer's website

Elizabeth De Wolfe's book The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories (2007) was the subject of a lengthy full-page feature on the Seattle Post Intelligencer's Book Patrol blog March 10, 2010. The book looks at the gruesome mid 19th-century death of a young Saco, Maine factory girl, who died from a botched abortion. The murder trial garnered extensive newspaper coverage and was the basis for several popular fictional accounts. De Wolfe looks back at these events through a wide-angle lens exploring such themes as the rapid social changes brought about by urbanization and industrialization in antebellum nineteenth-century society, factory work and the changing roles for women, unregulated sexuality and the specter of abortion. The Post Intelligencer column reviews and summarizes the narrative and themes of the the book with highlights of nine photographs from the book and Maine archive collections. The book won the 2008 Book Award from the New England Historical Association.

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The University of New England is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of flexible, accredited online degrees. In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.