Ella Maud — Nicholas Nicastro

On a cool November evening in 1901, Ella Maud ("Nell") Cropsey went out on her porch with her long-time boyfriend, Jim Wilcox. It was an evening like many before, in a town like any other, where extraordinary things rarely happened. Except this time Nell did not return.The mystery of her disappearance is still unsolved, haunting the community where it unfolded. It is the archetype of the modern news “event”, followed by millions around the nation and abroad at the dawn of the 20th century. Later, it became a celebrated Big Trial, straining primitive wire services as they struggled to give readers the descriptions, pictures, and details they craved. Finally, it became an unlikely redemption story, as voices around the nation rose up against what many viewed as a miscarriage of justice. The tragedy of Nell Cropsey contains the seeds of a thousand true-life sagas of despoiled innocence, of vanishing and murder and exoneration in the hot light of media scrutiny, down to today.In this speculative novel, Nicholas Nicastro marshals contemporary accounts, forensic science, psychology and the skills of a veteran historical novelist to reimagine Nell's person, family, world and legacy. Did Jim Wilcox have something to do with her fate? Or did the rush to judge him conceal another, more troubling reality--one that could not be washed away by the oily waters of the Pasquotank River? In the middle of it all, Wilcox remained curiously still, hardly defending himself, as the argument raged in the town and around the nation: what befell Nell Cropsey?“In this novel set in the early 1900s, one act tragically ruins the lives of two families. Based on a true story, this work of speculative fiction explores the murder of Ella Maud ‘Nell' Cropsey, the attractive, 19-year-old standout of a large family of transplanted Northerners in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. After a breakup with Jim Wilcox, her longtime beau, Nell disappears. Some speculate that she ran off to seek her fortune in a large metropolis while others fear that she harmed herself. But after her body pops up in a local river weeks later, suspicion falls on rough-edged Jim…There's a palpable sense of opportunities lost because of her death at such a young age. In this well-researched book, Nicastro cannily reveals just enough about Nell's death to make readers uneasy until just before the wistful conclusion. Nell is gone, but her death also effectively ends the lives of Jim, Ollie, William, and Mary, the sisters' long-suffering mother. The author skillfully makes his point that one misdeed produces many victims. The author continues his successful run of historical fiction with this thought-provoking crime tale.” -- Kirkus Reviews