Sarah Bramble holds an ignominious place in New London history. She was just a young woman — possibly a teen — when she was condemned to death by hanging in 1753 for allegedly killing her baby.

Bramble became the first white person to be executed in the city.

She swore she was innocent.

It is a story that Lisa Hall Brownell first heard about when she was a student at the Williams School in New London when she read Frances Manwaring Caulkins's "History of New London." She wrote a term paper on Bramble.

But, Brownell says now, so much remains a mystery.

Brownell returned to the topic over the years, including writing a short article about it for Connecticut College Magazine, where she was editor for 20 years.

"The story kept cropping up, I think because (it happened) close to where I was going to school and working and everything else. I was probably the same age Sarah Bramble was when she was executed when I learned about that story," says Brownell, who grew up in Waterford.

Years after she wrote that article, someone told Brownell she should look at Bramble's death warrant, since death warrants are available in the Connecticut State Library.

"It was almost overwhelming to me to hold (the warrant), and the statement by the sheriff explaining how he had conducted the execution," she recalls.

That moment spurred her to create a fictional counterpart to Sarah Bramble, named Mercy, in her novel "Gallows Road."

It is published by Elm Grove Press, an independent publisher based in Mystic, and is officially being released on April 2.

Ruth W. Crocker, who is publisher and editor of Elm Grove Press, says of deciding to publish "Gallows Road," "I loved the fact that Lisa had done such thorough research for her book and had developed the character of Mercy Bramble in such a sensitive and well-informed way."

Since it began in 2013, Elm Grove Press had only published nonfiction — until "Gallows Road."

"But I was so impressed with Lisa's book and the fact that it was based on a true story — I had to publish it," Crocker says.

Brownell is a freelance writer. Earlier in her career, before she became director of publications for Connecticut College, she was media director at Mysic Seaport Museum. (Her husband, Steve Fagin, writes an outdoor column for The Day.)

Finding Mercy

Brownell says that, even after she had finished the research on Sarah Bramble and had written "Gallows Road," she still had unanswered questions in her mind. Was Sarah Bramble actually guilty? Who was the father of her child? Where was she buried?

It's understandable that so much remains a question mark. People rarely kept a journal in those days, and many women weren't taught to read or write, Brownell notes. Even with the historical documents available, the person who wrote them might have had an agenda, or at least a point of view that might have colored what was reported.

While Brownell was unable to determine Sarah Bramble's exact age, she notes that sermons included in an imprint at the time by New London printer Timothy Green all mention her "youth."

So with such scant information available, Brownell's imagination took flight.

She named the fictional version of the character Mercy Bramble. "The word 'mercy' came up in a lot of sermons and so forth around this incident, so it just seemed a natural choice," Brownell says.

Brownell points out that an advantage of historical fiction is it can reach readers in a different way. She notes that the stage musical "Hamilton," for instance, isn't realistic, but it engages the public's imagination and conveys elements of the past in a way that allows viewers to experience the drama of that era.

The story of 'Gallows Road'

In "Gallows Road," Mercy is signed into indentured servitude by her mother. It is hard, thankless work. Her original master trades her to Bryan Palmes, 27, who has a lame left leg, and his ailing mother.

While her life is often fraught, Mercy finds friendship with fellow servants Cate, who is of Native American heritage, and Cate's husband Coffey, who is Black.

Mercy, 17, and Palmes eventually fall into bed together, and their second sexual encounter leads to her pregnancy, which she keeps secret for as long as she can. In the meantime, Palmes's mother has died and he has wed a harsh woman who gives Mercy no quarter. That woman's son is likewise a mean-spirited soul who is enamored with Mercy.

When Mercy's child dies, she is accused of murder. She denies the charge.

In the real world, Brownell says, Sarah Bramble "was put on trial twice, but in my version, there's only one trial. In reality, she was imprisoned for at least a year and a half, and she had two trials, both of them in the fall. In one, the jury couldn't come to a verdict. In the other one, they did, and we know (the result)."

In both the historical and the fictional cases, three ministers and a group called the Children of God tried to "save" Bramble's soul. It's unclear whether Sarah Bramble ever really confessed, Brownell says. Were the ministers and the members of the Children of God badgering her day and night to profess her guilt, as they do in the novel?

Bramble couldn't read or write; who wrote her last statement?

Brownell hopes readers see the connection between what seems like ancient history and now; there are "the same questions about the search for justice, and trying to find the truth in something is very difficult," she says.

And she notes that "life could be pretty miserable back then. There were all these rights and freedoms that we take for granted that really came at the expense of much suffering and injustice."

By no means a passive person

That said, in "Gallows Road," Mercy is no passive soul. She has an almost modern feminist idea about a woman's place and wants to learn to read and write. (Sarah Bramble couldn't do either.)

Brownell notes that the real Sarah Bramble "did have some agency because she often refused to hear sermons that were preached for her and so forth. So she was taking a stand on things, and she was not by any means a passive person. I wanted that to come out (in the novel). That was one of the hardest things about writing the book — not to use quaint language that would turn people away from the narrative and try to keep it very simple so you could relate and imagine that you were in those conversations. I definitely took liberties there. But I was trying to create a living, breathing character from what is now just a few dusty documents."

A real New London shipwreck

The book title was inspired by the local Gallows Lane but tweaked so that a reader wouldn't take the location literally.

Brownell included some dramatic and real historical events in "Gallows Road," too, including how a Spanish ship hit a reef just off New London's shore; the cargo was unloaded and stored, with guards ordered to stand by ... yet somehow all the booty disappeared.

That same ship had been ferrying crates of indigo, which burst open as the vessel sank — and dyed a white Spanish stallion blue.

Brownell read the journals of New London resident Joshua Hempsted, which is where she learned about the Spanish ship. She notes that Hempstead was "quite dry" when writing about Sarah Bramble's execution. He stated that thousands of people attended it. And he writes about then going home, entertaining company that night and putting four new spokes in an old wheel the next morning.

And there were certain things about the real Bramble that Brownell used when writing the fictional one: having to sleep in the kitchen, talking to different ministers, and her quest to be baptized, for instance.

Writing long hand

There were times when Brownell was stuck in writing certain sections of the book, so she tried writing in long hand, with the idea that it would give her a visceral sense of imagining the 18th century. That worked, and she would later keyboard that section into the computer and pare it down.

Brownell wrote a good deal of the novel in local libraries, which she says were nice and quiet; they are places where she wasn't going to answer her phone and she could tune into the world of the novel.

Wanting a better life

Over the course of "Gallows Road," Mercy is coming into her own and coming of age, after being deeply wounded by her mother leaving her in indentured servitude.

"She's a work-in-progress, someone who wants to stand up for herself, but also she wants to live, she wants freedom and a better life. She's trying to fight her way through this, the indentured servitude and also that she made this mistake in life with her master and had to pay for it," Brownell says.

By the book

What: "Gallows Road" by Lisa Hall Brownell

Cover price: $18.95

Publisher: Elm Grove Press

Where it's sold: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bank Square Books in Mystic, and from www.elmgrovepress.org

If you go

What: Author talk and Q&A

Who: "Gallows Road" author Lisa Hall Brownell and Elm Grove Press's Ruth Crocker

When: 6 p.m. April 26

Where: Bank Square Books, 53 West Main St., Mystic

Books available for sale during event

Wally Lamb weighs in

On the back of "Gallows Road" is this recommendation from bestselling author (and Connecticut resident/Norwich native) Wally Lamb: "Traversing the same rocky footpaths as Nathaniel Hawthorne's quintessential New England novel, 'The Scarlet Letter,' Lisa Hall Brownell's 'Gallows Road' tells an 18th-century story of love, sex, heartache, and hypocrisy. Yet Mercy Bramble is no opaque and respectful Hester Prynne. Mercy is a feisty, unschooled, and outspoken heroine who challenges the morals and mores of the staid, self-satisfied community that seeks to victimize her. I felt a near-magnetic pull into the pages of this humane, character-driven novel. I suspect you will, too."