**PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A VIRTUAL PROGRAM THAT WILL TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM. Registrants will receive a link to access the Zoom Meeting via email.** 

Author Jill Farinelli will discuss her  book, "The Palatine Wreck: The Legend of the New England Ghost Ship."  Two days after Christmas in 1738, a British merchant ship traveling to Philadelphia grounded in a blizzard on the northern tip of Block Island, twelve miles off the Rhode Island coast. The ship carried emigrants from the Palatinate and its neighboring territories in what is now southwest Germany. The 105 passengers and crew on board—sick, frozen, and starving—were all that remained of the 340 men, women, and children who had left their homeland the previous spring. They now found themselves castaways, on the verge of death, and at the mercy of a community of strangers whose language they did not speak. Some claim the ship was set ablaze to hide evidence of crimes, their stories fueled by reports of a fiery ghost ship first seen drifting in Block Island Sound on the one-year anniversary of the wreck. These tales became known as the legend of the Palatine, with the flaming apparition was nicknamed the Palatine Light. The eerie phenomenon has been witnessed by hundreds of people over the centuries, and numerous scientific theories have been offered as to its origin. Its continued reappearances, along with the attention of some of nineteenth-century America’s most notable writers, has helped keep the legend alive. Through years of painstaking research, Jill Farinelli reconstructs the origins of one of New England’s most chilling maritime mysteries.

About Jill: Jill graduated from William Smith College with a bachelor of arts degree in American Studies and English. Determined to live near the ocean in a city steeped in history, she moved to the Boston area where, for the past twenty-five years, she has worked as a freelance writer and editor, primarily in educational publishing. This is her first work of historical nonfiction, on a subject that captured her imagination after spending a week with friends on Block Island ten years ago. 

Sponsored by the Friends of the Library.