The Knapps Lived Here

Book excerpt: On a Sunday afternoon in 1959, in a small town on Long Island, 11 year old Ken Spooner watched along with most everyone as his personal playhouse, the Knapp Mansion, burned to the ground. Over 40 years passed before he would write a short story memoir of that day, triggering a very long journey through the first decade of the 21st century, to discover just who the Knapps were (no one seemed to know) and to find out who the arsonist was (that was the easy part). Through a folksy interwoven narrative, the reader discovers, as he did in realtime, the unwritten history of one of the Highest-Society, Lowest-Profile families America's gilded age has ever produced. Travel inside the many Knapp mansions, where 5 US Presidents and many icons of the 19th & 20th centuries were guests. This is Spooner's third book.