By the age of 12, Barbara Newhall Follett was already a published author and widely regarded as a child prodigy. However, in 1939, when she was 25, she walked out of her apartment and was never seen or heard from again. Follett shot to fame in 1927 with the publication of her novel The House Without Windows, which told the story of a young girl who leaves home to live in the wild. She is brought back by her parents, but vanishes permanently in an eerie parallel of Follett’s subsequent disappearance. The book was a huge hit, thanks to a glowing review in The New York Times. When she was 17, Barbara met Nickerson Rogers and eventually married him. A few years later, she discovered he was having an affair and realized the marriage could not be salvaged. In 1939, with just $30 in her pocket, Barbara left her apartment one day, never to be seen again. Her husband waited two weeks to report her missing, but he did so under her married name and no one drew the connection to the prodigal author. Her own mother didn’t find out she was missing until the late 1940s. Some speculated she had committed suicide, while others thought she had been murdered by her estranged husband. Her nephew, Stefan Cooke, has been researching his aunt’s life for 15 years has his own theory. He believes his aunt took a train to Plymouth, Mass., staying the night at a barn she and her husband rented. The next morning she walked to her favorite lake, hugged her favorite tree, and then committed suicide. He believes her husband was unhappy and wanted a divorce, but he doesn’t think he had anything to do with Barbara’s disappearance. Today, the mystery remains.
