My literary writing career began with short stories, which fit best around raising children and a full-time work schedule, and my collection, Things We Lost, Gave Away, Bought High and Sold Low, represents the best of those published over a span of 20 years.

“The book’s emotional terrain is familiar, authentic, deeply appealing, and disturbing in the hard truths revealed. Navas writes with wisdom, sensitivity, and authority about relationships between men and women, mothers and sons, friends and enemies.”
—Rebecca Rule, Concord Monitor

“With the publication of Navas’s first collection, readers around America will have the chance to see how broad and entertaining her talent runs.” —Alan Cheuse

“Deborah Navas knows all about the high emotional cost of living. …she’s taken the measure of our pleasure and pain and rendered the sum with subtlety and feeling.”
. —Rosellen Brown

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If you would like to order a copy of this book, send a check to Deborah Navas for $14.95 (includes shipping & handling) to 43 Nubanusit Rd., Nelson, NH 03457.

Title Story

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Over the last decade I’ve been waylaid by a fascinating and provocative story involving love, betrayal, and murder that occurred during the Revolutionary war. I’ve thoroughly researched, written, and published it as nonfiction but still felt compelled to write it as fiction in order to provide Bathsheba Spooner’s voice, and am finishing it now.

Murdered by His Wife, (University of Massachusetts Press) is an historical account of a love affair and murder that took place near Worcester, Massachusetts during the American Revolution. Bathsheba Spooner was a noted beauty, mother of three, and ardent Loyalist caught in an abusive marriage. In early 1777 she took in and nursed a young Continental soldier named Ezra Ross. They became lovers, she conceived a child, and they both—along with two British soldiers—were found guilty in the murder of her husband, Joshua Spooner. When she sought a stay of execution to deliver her baby, the Massachusetts Council rejected her petition, and she was promptly hanged, though five months pregnant, before a crowd of 5000 spectators.

“Navas has produced a little gem—rock hard and glistening. Her story itself has great intrinsic fascination (sex, violence, betrayal, even a kind of ‘redemption’). But her telling of the story is best of all: so simple, so direct, so utterly compelling. In short, one feels a very gifted writer at work here.”

…………………………………………………….. —John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive

Table of Contents and Appendix

Introduction

Chapter One

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Things We Lost, Gave Away, Bought High and Sold Low is available for $14.95. Send a check to Deborah Navas, 43 Nubanusit Rd., Nelson, NH 03457.
Murdered by His Wife is available through Hopkins Fulfillment Service, 800-537-5487, and can be ordered from Amazon.