A farm boy arrives in Philadelphia with nothing and falls in with the elegant, secretive Welbeck, whose house hides forgery, debt and a killing. Then yellow fever sweeps the city, and Arthur moves through deserted streets, plague hospitals and abandoned houses, never quite sure whether his own innocence is real.
An early American novel of plague and deception that Hawthorne honoured, still unsettling in its moral ambiguity. Download the free EPUB.