May 2, 2023 Centre County native Charles Fergus will present a talk and book signing about his third Gideon Stoltz Mystery, Lay This Body Down. Fergus writes mysteries set in Pennsylvania in the Jacksonian Era of the 1830s. This talk will be held at the Centre Furnace Mansion in State College at 7:00 p.m.
Lay This Body Down takes place in 1837 during one of the most horrific periods in American history, when human beings were considered chattel and both Northern and Southern states grew rich because of slavery. A Pennsylvania sheriff like Gideon Stoltz could choose to uphold the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 or defy that racist law at great peril.