In re-creating the events of August 4, 1892, that fateful day in Fall River, Massachusetts, and the extraordinary circumstances that led up to them, Evan Hunter spins a breathtakingly imaginative tale of an enigmatic spinster whose secret life would eventually force her to the ultimate confrontation with her stepmother and father.

Here is Lizzie Borden freed of history and legend—a full-bodied woman of hot blood and passion, fighting against her prim New England upbringing, surrendering to the late-Victorian hedonism of London, Paris, and the Riviera, yet fated to live out her meager life in a placid Massachusetts town.

Seething with frustration and rage, a prisoner of her appetites, Lizzie Borden finally snapped . . . but how and why she was led into her uncompromising acts is at the heart of this enthralling, suspenseful work of the imagination.

Alternating scenes from the actual inquest and trial with an account of her head-spinning, seductive trip to Europe, Evan Hunter portrays the agony of a passionate woman and the depths of her murdering heart.