News Flash

Hampton native and public historian Conover Hunt talks about how she turned history into mystery for her novel The Constitution Murders at the Hampton History Museum’s free “Lunch in Time” series event on Wednesday, August 15, noon-1:00 p.m.

The Constitution Murders is Hunt’s first novel, her ninth book. The publisher calls it, “a pulse-pounding whodunit.” Readers will recognize many Virginia places and family names. The author has published earlier nonfiction books about James and Dolley Madison, women’s history, and the Madison home, Montpelier in Orange, VA. This book takes place in 2011 with flashbacks to the era of the 1812 war with Great Britain.

It starts with a headless torso found aboard the deck of the USS Constitution in Boston. All along the East Coast, someone has evaded sophisticated security systems to break into thirteen of America’s most iconic historic sites.

Female protagonist Cary Mallory was raised in Hampton by her crabmeat-processor grandfather Captain Johnny Mallory. Trained as a public historian turned American antiques dealer, she is working in Church Hill in Richmond, when a murder involving the Madison estate, Montpelier, lures her into an international search for the identity of the victim and the perpetrators of the crime.

The complex plot features real and fictional characters from the National Park Service and the Department of Homeland Security, Russian aristocrats, Texas heiresses, Mexican drug lords, museum officials, and genetic scientists.

Hunt will sign books after her talk. The book is available in the museum gift shop for $12.99.

Admission is free. Attendees are encouraged to bring a bag lunch. The museum will have free dessert.

Conover Hunt

Hunt is a native of Hampton and a 1964 graduate of Hampton High School. She attended Sweet Briar College and received a BA, cum laude in Art History from Newcomb College at Tulane, where she was named a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She received a MA in Early American Culture from the Winterthur Museum Program at the University of Delaware in 1971.

Hunt has curated or directed museums and historical agencies in Richmond,

Washington, D.C., Dallas, Philadelphia, and Hampton, and has consulted nationally to more than 50 cultural nonprofits in the areas of project management, fund raising, organizational development and strategic planning. She has won local, state and national awards, authored or coauthored ten books and participated in dozens of community organizations.

From 2007 to 2010 she served as Interim Executive Director, then Deputy Director of the Fort Monroe Federal Development Authority. She worked from 2011 to April 2018 for Soundscapes, a nonprofit after school intervention program for needy children in Newport News.

She lives at Buckroe Beach with her furry companion Ziggy.

The Hampton History Museum is located at 120 Old Hampton Lane in Downtown Hampton. There is free parking in the garage across the street from the museum. For more information call 757-727-1102.