Extra marital duplicity has been around for as long as marriage but how affairs have been kept secret has changed with the times. On The Point, we hear the story of a love affair that took place in the 1800’s but was concealed for over a century in secret code. Author Sara Day, a former Library of Congress writer and editor, stumbled across the truth after reading through decades of correspondence between Edward Everett Hale, a well known and married Unitarian Minister and Harriet Freeman, an unmarried woman 25 years his junior with a passion for science, travel and the outdoor life. Mindy Todd interviews Sara Day about her book Coded Letters, Concealed Love: The Larger Lives of Harriet Freeman and Edward Everett Hale, which chronicles the secret romance between Hale and Freeman revealed through 3,000 love letters (1884-1909) written partly in code. The Reverend Edward Everett Hale was one of the most revered moral and thought leaders of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and yet, for twenty years he lived a double life.
