In Search of Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood's novel Alias Grace is based on the murder of Thomas Kinnear and his mistress Nancy Montgomery in 1843. Kinnear's manservant was hung for the crime, but the execution of his supposed accomplice Grace Marks, owing to her "feeble sex" and "extreme youth," was commuted to life. The entire event excited widespread interest although few agreed that justice had been served. Some denounced Grace as a cunning demon, others considered her a terrorized victim of circumstance and pleaded for mercy. These opinions were influenced by various political and religious agendas of the day as well as by Victorian views on gender, class and justice. Little concrete evidence was identified, and journalists contradicted one and other. Everyone who ever set pen to paper on the subject of Grace seems to have been intensely subjective. In In Search of Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood describes her own search for the facts, what she found out, what eluded her grasp and how this process shaped her novel.