{"id":164207,"date":"2026-07-14T13:59:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T18:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=164207"},"modified":"2026-07-14T17:26:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T22:26:21","slug":"katherine-grandjean-for-kingdom-of-devils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/katherine-grandjean-for-kingdom-of-devils\/","title":{"rendered":"Upcoming Author Event: Katherine Grandjean for Kingdom of Devils"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thursday, July 16 at Off Square Books<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Join Square Books in welcoming historian Katherine Grandjean for Kingdom of Devils<\/em>, the chilling true story of a brutal string of deaths on the post-Revolutionary frontier that reveal the violence at the heart of the young United States.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katherine Grandjean<\/strong> is an associate professor of history at Wellesley College<\/strong>, where her research explores early American and Native American history, environmental history, and violence in American history. Her first book is American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England<\/em><\/strong>. She has been the recipient of several major research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities<\/strong>, the American Antiquarian Society<\/strong>, and the American Council of Learned Societies<\/strong>, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the book<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kentucky, 1798: A harrowing series of murders begins. The first body, discovered by cattle drovers, lies bloody at the bottom of a ridge. Then another\u2014a dead boy staring up from a sinkhole. Bodies turn up along roadsides, stuffed into brush. They float to the surface of muddy brooks. For nine terrifying months, over hundreds of miles of Kentucky and Tennessee countryside, the terror unfolds. The killers\u2014two men with hazy backgrounds\u2014are brothers, named Wiley and Micajah Harp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Harps killed dozens, but why they did it has eluded folklorists and historians for generations. Almost every story imagines that their motive was pure bloodlust, but for historian Katherine Grandjean, that\u2019s too simple. Instead, she uses the Harp murders to reveal the dark side of the young United States\u2019 independence. These were uncertain and dangerous years\u2014a time when the fledgling federal government could do little to protect its citizens. And if the American Revolution was liberating, it was also deeply destabilizing, politically and socially. Even as it built up some men, it stacked the deck against others, punishing them with volatile markets, lost safety nets, and shattered aspirations. Unspooling the mystery of what sent the Harps reeling exposes the hidden, violent legacies of the revolutionary era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bristling with tense, page-turning storytelling\u2014and driven by a historian\u2019s obsessive detective work\u2014Kingdom of Devils <\/em>recovers these long-forgotten murders as a haunting tale about the darkness at the heart of the American dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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