The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth is printed in Boston, Massachusetts. The book was the first novel by an American writer to be published in America. The first editions of the book did not carry the author's name, but a later printing carried the name of Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton. However, some scholars attribute the book's authorship to William Hill Brown. The content was a thinly veiled account of the seduction and suicide of a young woman in Morton's family.