Lizzie Borden, The Girl with the Pansy Pin

Lizzie Borden and her sister Emma lived a life of privilege and entitlement, with wealth and social status far beyond their neighbors. But most pleasures were just window dressing, dangling beyond their reach. Riches were kept quarantined by a frugal patriarch, unable or unwilling to change his scrimping ways. As they became older, Lizzie and her sister grew restless, aching for a more opulent life-to reside on the Hill, in a big house, amongst their peers, and Fall River's finest families. Now their father was planning to give all his wealth away-to his wife, no doubt. And, why not? Abby Durfee Borden had been a devoted mother to his two ungrateful daughters. Andrew Jackson Borden had no intention of moving to the Hill or abandoning the home he had purchased for his wife. Discord and turmoil soon began to ferment and fester.

Lizzie expressed concern that "Father has enemies and I fear that they will burn the house down around us."

On a sultry August morning, in the naked light of day, someone entered 92 Second Street and brutally hacked and murdered Andrew and Abby Borden. Soon the finger of guilt pointed to Lizzie. But she loved her father. He meant everything to her. The gold ring she had lovingly given him and that he always wore said as much. She would never have harmed him. Or would she?

The Girl with the Pansy Pin tells the gripping story of a desirable and vivacious young Victorian woman desperately longing for adventure and a lavish life. Instead, she wasted away in a stale, modest existence, in a father's foregone reality, one with little chance of ever discovering love, happiness, or fulfillment. Now they have charged poor Lizzie with double murder.