The Girl from Greenwich Street by Lauren Willig Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: American History, historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery, true crime
Pages: 352
Published by William Morrow on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Based on the true story of a famous trial, this novel is Law and 1800, as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr investigate the shocking murder of a young woman who everyone—and no one—seemed to know.
At the start of a new century, a shocking murder transfixes Manhattan, forcing bitter rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr to work together to save a man from the gallows.
Just before Christmas 1799, Elma Sands slips out of her Quaker cousin’s boarding house—and doesn’t come home. Has she eloped? Run away? No one knows—until her body appears in the Manhattan Well.
Her family insists they know who killed her. Handbills circulate around the city accusing a carpenter named Levi Weeks of seducing and murdering Elma.
But privately, quietly, Levi’s wealthy brother calls in a special favor….
Aaron Burr’s legal practice can’t finance both his expensive tastes and his ambition to win the 1800 New York elections. To defend Levi Weeks is a double a hefty fee plus a chance to grab headlines.
Alexander Hamilton has his own political aspirations; he isn’t going to let Burr monopolize the public’s attention. If Burr is defending Levi Weeks, then Hamilton will too. As the trial and the election draw near, Burr and Hamilton race against time to save a man’s life—and destroy each other.
Part murder mystery, part thriller, part true crime, The Girl From Greenwich Street revisits a dark corner of history—with a surprising twist ending that reveals the true story of the woman at the center of the tale.
My Review:
This fascinating combination of historical fiction, true crime AND mystery tells the story of the first sensational murder trial in what was then, in 1800, these new United States. We don’t know much about the victim, Elma Sands. They didn’t then, either, which is kind of the point. Sometimes it’s still the point. Trying a case in the press doesn’t require much knowledge of either the victim or the accused, then or now.
But the case – this case is still notorious over 200 years later.
First, because it was the first. Firsts always have a bit of cachet. Seconds, not so much. This wasn’t just the first murder trial, it was also the first such trial to have a full transcript. And if you’re thinking that Pitman shorthand wasn’t introduced until 1837, decades after this trial, you’d be right.
But shorthand did not emerge, fully formed, from the head of Isaac Pitman. The court record for this trial practiced an earlier version of shorthand, and recorded the trial verbatim, admittedly with a few idiosyncrasies.
What makes this case still fascinating, perhaps even more so than it has been over the intervening centuries, are the names of two of the three members of the council for the defence. You know them. Once I name them you won’t be able to see them without filtering that image through their portrayals in Hamilton. (This trial is even alluded to in the play in the fast-talking lyrics of “Non-Stop.”
Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton acted as two-thirds of the defense of Levi Weeks, the man accused of murdering Elma Sands. I’m not saying they formed a team, because that’s a HUGE stretch. By 1800, those two towering figures of American history were at odds. And they were over the course of the trial as well, each attempting to use the notoriety of the trial to further their respective causes in the upcoming election of 1800. Each doing their best and worst so score off against the other because they could – and couldn’t bear not to.
That a young woman was dead and a young man’s life hung in the balance never stopped these lifelong enemies from taking pieces out of each other even while their client languished behind bars and the press raised a hue and cry over ALL their heads.
Escape Rating A-: Of all the books I’ve read this week, this is the one I found the most fascinating and the one I’ve shoved at the most people. It’s a captivating story, sometimes in spite of itself, because of the way that it combines U.S. history and politics, mystery, true crime and the still inspirational voice of the play Hamilton and weaves it together into a compelling mess of a story.
I call the story a mess not because the author didn’t do a terrific job of making it all make as much sense as it’s ever going to – because she absolutely did. But rather, the historical record itself is really, seriously messy as a murder investigation and as a legal case, the question of who really done it has NEVER been resolved, the circumstances under which the case was conducted are basically insane, and the only available evidence for anything at all – except of course for the dead body – are entirely circumstantial and don’t hang together into any cohesive narrative.
Which is why no one ever hung for the crime.
The story, in the end, is at the intersection of two clichés. One, attributed to Mark Twain in multiple iterations, is the one that goes, “The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.” Even today, reading the story, the mind cries out for a logical conclusion, but there’s not enough there to come to one. Which leads to the other screaming cliché, the one where “assume makes an ass out of you and me”. There are a LOT of asses here. It seems as if all the attempts at making sense of this thing, both then and now, start with an assumption that doesn’t hold up.
But as fascinating as the truly messy trial process is, between the in-over-his-head-and-drowning-fast prosecutor and the resulting exhaustion of the judge, the jury and everyone involved, what makes the story sing (pardon the irresistible pun) is the rivalry between Hamilton and Burr. The transcription of the trial does not indicate which of the three defense lawyers made which statements or asked which witnesses which questions. Nor are there any records of Burr’s and Hamilton’s arguments over how the defense should proceed in the days before the trial. But the heated discussions and the hidden thoughts between the rivals feel true to the characters we believe we know – even if or especially because we’re hearing them in Leslie Odom Jr.’s and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s voices.
Particularly as we hear in those voices the echo of Hamilton’s words to Burr over and under their every debate about justice versus expediency, “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?”
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