Springtime for Sophie

<p>The year was 1909 the setting a decaying New England mill town. A saloonkeeper was left for dead shot a dozen times his throat slashed for good measure yet still babbling that a winsome music teacher and her young beau the victim's rival in love had done the deed. The two murder trials that followed drew curious hordes and the attention of a nation. With meticulous archival work and rare narrative gifts Professor Richard Underwood unearths this lost tale of death duplicity and personal ruin. In retelling a grisly true-life crime story Underwood delivers a rich ethnography of Naugatuck Connecticut and a law school seminar on evidence criminal procedure trial strategy and lawyers' ethics. It is a lesson too in the gnawing uncertainty of true-life crime stories where some witnesses lie and others honestly forget and crafty lawyers win fame by torturing the truth into submission to their designs.</p><p></p>