The Crate

Claire Maddox, an estranged architect daughter, arrives at her late father’s rural Brimfield, Massachusetts farmhouse to settle his estate and finds a locked, padlocked crate in the barn stenciled with a factory serial number: the transaxle from the Porsche 550 Spyder James Dean was driving when he died in 1955, nine days after actor Alec Guinness looked at the car and told him, “If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.” Claire’s brother Danny wants to sell; Porsche historian Victor Osman arrives to authenticate a piece worth well over half a million dollars; and two sealed letters, written and rewritten by their father across thirty years, reveal why he kept the object secret rather than dealing with it, or reconciling with Claire. Over two days in the barn where he hid it, Claire must decide what a family, and a piece of history, actually owe each other. Based on a real, documented object: the transaxle from chassis 550-0055 was discovered in Massachusetts in 2020 and authenticated at auction. The characters and their story are invented; the object and its history are real.