In June 1934, nurse Delia Rowan rode alone into Drownwater Gap, a hollow so remote it had vanished from North Carolina maps. Twenty-seven members of the Marlo family lived there, yet no nurse had…
The old woman on the ridge. Go to her. Redbird. Those nine words came through the crack under the barn door at two in the morning, whispered in a rush, as though the woman on the other side had rehearsed them all day and had one breath to get them out. Delphia Rowan lay on … Read more
In the spring of 1886, a young El Paso prostitute named Bessie Colvin walked out of Alice Abbott’s parlor house and announced she was taking her business across the street to a rival madam named…
The bullet struck low, in the notch where the pelvis curves like a horseshoe at the very front of the body, just above everything a woman in Alice Abbott’s line of work counted on. It passed to the right of the bone and went clean through, missing every vital it could have found on the … Read more
In October 1991, Darlene Pruitt vanished from her Kernersville home, leaving a half-eaten dinner plate, her purse, her keys, and her four-year-old dauNaN
In the autumn of 1991, a young nurse named Darlene Pruitt vanished from Kernersville, North Carolina, leaving behind a half-eaten plate of Sunday dinner, a porch light still burning, and a 4-year-old daughter who would spend the next three decades asking questions no one in that county would answer. Authorities initially treated it as a … Read more
In 1944, Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, the spirited fourth child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, married William Cavendish, heir to the Duke of Devonshire, defying her devout Catholic mother, who opposed…
The private plane lifted off from a small airfield in France on a May afternoon in 1948, carrying six passengers toward the French Riviera. Among them was Kathleen Kennedy, twenty-eight years old, a widow, a woman who had twice chosen love over the conventions of her family and her faith. She was on her way … Read more
In April 1897, a young minister named Elvinston Corin rode up Notch Road in Letcher County, Kentucky, to visit the Otwell sisters, Mercy and Tabitha, who lived alone in a cabin above a sawmill….
The two women at the head of Willow Brook Hollow were named Mercy and Tabitha Ottwell. Mercy was thirty-two in the spring of 1897. Her sister Tabitha was twenty-eight. They were the last of the line that had lived in the hollow since before Letcher County had a name written in ink. The story the … Read more
In 1851, Moses Venir and Althea Rask made a pact before stealing their enslaver’s boat on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River: neither would reach freedom by abandoning the other. Bramwell Sires…
The bell behind them did not stop. It was not meant merely to wake the household. It was an alarm meant to turn every road, every landing, every stretch of the river into part of the hunt. Moses heard it and changed his stroke. Not straight across the river. Althea looked toward the Indiana shore. … Read more
On October 4, 1990, a garage attendant finally checked the Cadillac that had sat untouched for three days beneath the World Trade Center’s North TowerNaN
On October 4, 1990, a parking garage attendant at the World Trade Center finally decided to check on a Cadillac that had been sitting in the same spot beneath the North Tower for three days. Thousands of people passed through the underground garage every day. No one had paid attention to a car that never … Read more
In 1883, on a hidden bend of the Canadian River in Indian Territory, a woman named Belle Starr was convicted of horse theft by Judge Isaac Parker, the feared “Hanging Judge.” Born Myra Maybelle…
The Canadian River curved through Indian Territory, and on one hidden bend of it lay a piece of land that no sheriff wanted to enter. It was called Younger’s Bend, and the woman who owned it had turned her home into a wall between wanted men and the law. By the time she was in … Read more
In 1933, crews began building Norris Dam on the Clinch River, where a steel cable stretched between two towers anchored in solid rock. Hanging from that cable, 400 feet above the water, swung an…
Four hundred feet above the Clinch River in eastern Tennessee, a steel cable stretched between two towers anchored into solid rock. Hanging from that cable, swinging over open air, was an eight-cubic-yard bucket filled with wet concrete weighing close to twenty tons. One operator on the far side controlled everything. If the cable snapped, if … Read more
On May 6th, 1944, Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy stood inside London’s Caxton Hall Register Office in a simple pale pink suit, clutching pink camellias sent NaN
In the spring of 1948, a 28-year-old widow boarded a small de Havilland Dove aircraft bound for France. She was not fleeing danger. She was flying toward a conversation she had spent years learning to survive without. Her destination was the French Riviera, where her father, Joseph Kennedy, was traveling. She carried with her a … Read more