The House of Seven Gables Inspired My Debut Novel">

Ashley Woo on Otherness, the Darkness of the Past, and How History Shapes Her Writing

Situated directly on the waterfront of Salem Harbor in Massachusetts, there sits a two-story timber home. The wood is dark, evocative of the traditional First Period architecture of the early colonies. And most notably, it has many gables, triangular sections of an exterior wall, where roof lines meet. The effect is imposing. Eerie. It’s easy to imagine the home standing in those difficult early years in American history, witnessing both hardship and hope.

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Indeed, this is no ordinary house. First built in 1668 for the sea captain John Turner, The House of the Seven Gables was later inhabited by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne.…