An Alabaster Box by Mary Wilkins Freeman

An Alabaster Box by Mary Wilkins Freeman
Tale of a box, which is the thread that holds a collection of short romantic and mystery tales together.
Miss Lydia Orr's generosity to the town of Brookville is seen with suspicion from nearly everybody in the town and they're trying to figure out her motive in pouring out her wealth upon the inhabitants of the small, sleepy town. Little do they know that it has a lot to do with the town's past.  And of course, the alabaster box figures prominently in this part of the tales.
Other Novels by Mary Wilkins Freeman can be found HERE.

Freeman was born in Randolph, Massachusetts on October 31, 1852, to Eleanor Lothrop and Warren Edward Wilkins, who originally baptized her "Mary Ella". Freeman's parents were orthodox Congregationalists, bestowing a very strict childhood.  Religious constraints play a key role in some of her works.

In 1867, the family moved to Brattleboro, Vermont, where Freeman graduated from the local high school before attending Mount Holyoke College(then, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for one year, from 1870–71. She later finished her education at Glenwood Seminary in West Brattleboro.[3] When the family's dry goods business in Vermont failed in 1873, the family returned to Randolph, Massachusetts. Freeman's mother died three years later, and she changed her middle name to "Eleanor" in her memory.

Freeman's father died suddenly in 1883, leaving her without any immediate family and an estate worth only $973. Wilkins returned to her hometown of Randolph. She moved in with a friend, Mary J. Wales, and began writing as her only source of income.

During a visit to Metuchen, New Jersey in 1892, she met Dr. Charles Manning Freeman, a non-practicing medical doctor seven years younger than she. After years of courtship and delays, the two were married on January 1, 1902. Immediately after, she firmly established her name as "Mary E. Wilkins Freeman", which she asked Harper's to use on all of her work. The couple built a home in Metuchen, where Freeman became a local celebrity for her writing, despite having occasionally published satirical fictional representations of her neighbors. Her husband suffered from alcoholism and an addiction to sleeping powders. He also had a reputation for driving fast horses,and womanizing. He was committed to the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane in Trenton, and the two legally separated a year later  After his death in 1923, he left the majority of his wealth to his chauffeur and only one dollar to his former wife.

In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Freeman suffered a heart attack and died in Metuchen on March 15, 1930, aged 77. She was layed to rest in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.