Casolaro 5

Danny learned that Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of author Mary Shelley, died after giving birth to her daughter. He could imagine the husband’s and the midwife’s devastation, even if maternal death was common then. Mary Shelley’s husband, poet Percy Shelley, died by drowning, age 29, either by, take your pick, accident, suicide, or murder. Percy met his doppelganger soon before, Danny later read, completely enthralled, and believed that was an omen of impending death. He escaped not one but two shootings in the days before his death. A family friend snatched Percy’s heart from his funeral pyre, gave it to Mary, who kept it and was buried with it.