She's Gone

She’s Gone collects the true stories of five different women living in different decades who all have one thing in common: one moment they were busy living their lives and the next moment … they were gone.

From the 1910 disappearance of New York heiress Dorothy Arnold to the 1977 vanishing of teenager Simone Ridinger, author Brunelle details both famous and lesser-known cases that remain unsolved. Board a luxury liner with Agnes Tufverson as she embarks on a European honeymoon before her mysterious 1933 disappearance over the Atlantic; follow Jean Spangler to a famous 1940s Hollywood nightclub as she arrives for a clandestine meeting in a private booth.

Due to a strong belief that good girls didn’t disappear, when authorities and family members were presented with missing women in the twentieth century, it was often assumed that they had simply ran away. Most investigations were funded by family members, and when women were found to be the victims of violent crime, they were faulted for placing themselves in dangerous situations. On the rare occasions when authorities investigated cases, they relied on interviews and cash trails in combination with rudimentary forensics such as blood typing and fingerprinting to find missing persons. For those reasons, many of the real stories from this time period have yet to be told.

Featuring never-before-seen letters and documents, personal interviews, and genealogical research alongside captivating storytelling, Brunelle delves deep into the lives of those who disappeared and the circumstances surrounding their disappearances.

Kathleen Brunelle is an English teacher and historian. Brunelle is a regular speaker at libraries, organizations, and bookstores throughout Cape Cod and Massachusetts, and is the author of Bellamy’s Bride: The Search for Maria Hallett of Cape Cod and Cape Cod’s Highfield and Tanglewood: A Tale of Two Cottages. Her work has been featured on NPR and Spooky Southcoast, among others, and she has appeared television shows such as Discovery Channel's Mummies Unwrapped and Genealogy Roadshow. She lives in Fairhaven , Massachusetts, with her husband, Robert, their children, Baylen and Mariel, and yellow lab, Buddy.