Based on the unsolved real-life disappearance of a Mount Holyoke student in 1897—a haunting novel of intrigue, longing, and terror, perfect for fans of Donna Tartt and Sarah Waters

Massachusetts, 1897: Bertha Mellish, “the most peculiar, quiet, reserved girl” at Mount Holyoke College, is missing.

As a search team dredges the pond where Bertha might have drowned, her panicked father and sister arrive desperate to find some clue to her fate or state of mind. Bertha’s best friend, Agnes, a scholarly loner studying medicine, might know the truth, but she is being unhelpfully tightlipped, inciting the suspicions of Bertha’s family, her classmates, and the private investigator hired by the Mellish family doctor. As secrets from Agnes’s and Bertha’s lives come to light, so do the competing agendas driving each person who is searching for Bertha.

Where did Bertha go? Who would want to hurt her? And could she still be alive?

Edmund White Award–winning author Katharine Beutner takes a real-life unsolved mystery and crafts it into an unforgettable historical portrait of academia, family trauma, and the risks faced by women who dared to pursue unconventional paths at the end of the 19th century.

REVIEWS

"Like Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, Killingly is an evocative novel crafted from an actual historical mystery where, according to Beutner, the subversive elements of a 19th-century women's college are ‘thoroughly intertwined with oppression.’”
—The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Beutner uses [Bertha Melish's] disappearance as a wider set-piece to investigate the nature of those who stand apart from the crowd, and are punished for their independence.”—CrimeReads

“Almost all the characters guard secrets of their own, secrets that Beutner exposes one by one as she skillfully stretches out the tension. Although readers may guess at aspects of the plot, not until the end of the book will they be certain of all the details and motivations.”—Histrorical Novel Society

PRODUCT DETAILS
Hardcover Edition
Publisher: Soho Crime
ISBN: 978-1641295710
Pages: 360