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City, New Jersey. Presumably the priest knew nothing of the past pregnancy.
    Soon after the wedding Cora gave Crippen his first glimpse of a trait in her character that would become more salient as the years passed: She liked secrets. She told him her real name was not Cora Turner—though the name she now gave seemed hardly real, more like something concocted by a music hall comedian. Her true name, she said, was Kunigunde Mackamotzki.
    She planned, however, to keep calling herself Cora. It had been her nickname since childhood, but more importantly Kunigunde Mackamotzki was hardly a name to foster success in the world of Grand Opera.
    Almost immediately the newlyweds found themselves battered by failed decisions and forces beyond their control.

    H AWLEY H ARVEY C RIPPEN was born in Coldwater, Michigan, in 1862, in the midst of two wars, the distant Civil War and closer to home the war against Satan, an enemy deemed by most people in the town to be as real, if not as tangible, as the gray-uniformed men of the South.
    The Crippen clan came to Coldwater early and in force, their arrival described in a nineteenth-century history of Branch County, Michigan, as “the coming of a colony of methodists.” They spent generously toward the construction of a Methodist church in Coldwater, though at least one prominent member of the family was a Spiritualist. In this he had company, for Coldwater was known as a hotbed not just of Protestant but also of Spiritualist belief, the latter apparently a product of migration. Like so many of their neighbors, the Crippens had moved to Michigan from western New York, a region eventually nicknamed the “burnt-over district” for its willingness to succumb to new and passionate religions.
    Crippen’s grandfather, Philo, arrived in 1835 and after courting with alacrity married a Miss Sophia Smith later the same year. He founded a dry goods store, which expanded to become one of the most important businesses in town and a significant presence on Chicago Street, the main commercial corridor, where the Chicago Turnpike sliced through. Soon Crippens seemed to be taking over. One operated a flouring mill on Pearl Street; another opened a store that sold produce as well as general merchandise. A Crippen named Hattie played the organ at the Methodist church, and still another, Mae, became a principal in the city’s schools. There was a Crippen Building and a Crippen Street.
    The town of Coldwater grew rapidly, thanks to its location both on the turnpike and on the main line of the Lake Shore Michigan Southern Railroad, and Chicago Street became the center of commerce in southern Michigan. A man with money strolling the street could buy nearly anything from an array of specialized shops that sold boots, guns, hats, watches, jewelry, and locally made cigars and carriages, for which the town was becoming increasingly famous. The most prestigious industry was horse breeding. One farm cultivated racing horses that achieved fame nationwide, among them Vermont Hero, Hambletonian Wilkes, and the most famous, Green Mountain Black Hawk.
    Coldwater was wealthy, and its residents built houses to reflect the fact, studding the town’s core with graceful homes of wood, brick, and stone, many destined to survive into the twenty-first century and transform Coldwater into a mecca for students of Victorian architecture. One early edition of the Coldwater city directory observed, “The pleasant drives and parks shaded perfectly by magnanimous maples, the many miles of well kept walks, the brilliantly lighted streets, the neat and substantial residences, the urban appearing business places all in part go to make up this city so fortunately inhabited with well educated, intelligent and thoughtful people whose actions both publicly and privately are devotedly American.”
    Philo Crippen and his wife soon had a son, Myron, who in turn married a woman named Andresse Skinner and eventually took over the family’s dry