"The House of the Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a Gothic novel written beginning in mid-1850 and published in April 1851. The story follows a New England family haunted by an ancient curse tied to their ancestral home, built on land wrongfully seized during the Salem Witch Trials. Exploring themes of guilt, retribution, and atonement, the novel weaves together past and present as impoverished Hepzibah Pyncheon, her brother Clifford, and their young cousin Phoebe confront family secrets and the mysterious death of Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. (This is an automatically generated summary.)