Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. Hawthorne's awesome novel of Americans abroad, the first novel to explore the influence of European cultural ideas on American morality. Hawthorne is concerned here with the nature of transgression and guilt. A murder, motivated by love, affects not only Donatello, the murderer, but his beloved Miriam and their friends Hilda and Kenyon.