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  • Location: Hadley, Killingly

Killingley

Killingley

Why a Booktrail?

1837: A girl goes missing from a school. Based on a true story.

  • ISBN: B0BPNB8126
  • Genre: Crime, Inspired by true events

What you need to know before your trail

The young women at Mount Holyoke College are famed for their beauty and virtue – except for Agnes and Bertha. With their strange dresses, scholarly pursuits and intimate friendship, these two students are considered peculiar.

One autumn morning, Bertha vanishes, leaving Agnes to wander the cold university halls alone.

As a search team dredges the pond where Bertha might have drowned, an investigation into her disappearance begins. Agnes might know the truth, but she is being unhelpfully tight-lipped, inciting the suspicions of Bertha’s family, the students at Mount Holyoke, and the detective hired for the case. As secrets from Bertha and Agnes’s lives begin to surface, so do the competing agendas driving each person who is searching for her.

Travel Guide

Hadley, Massachusetts

True life story of a girl who went missing from a college

Bertha Lane Mellish was a student at Mt. Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts who disappeared from the College on the 18 th of November, 1897. No trace of her has been found since.

Connecticut – Killingly

Killingly is a real town in Windham County, Connecticut. The population was 17,752 at the 2020 census.

BookTrail Boarding Pass: Killingley

Destination/location: Massachusetts, CT Author/guide:  Katharine Beutner  Departure Time: 1867

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