Barbara Newhall Follett was a bit of a writing prodigy in the Jazz Age. She published a critically acclaimed novel at age 13. Everybody agreed that she would be the next great American writer, and she probably would have been, if it hadn’t been for her father. He ran off with a younger woman, leaving her and her mother penniless. She started working as a typist at age 16 and was never known to write again.
In 1939, after 10 years of this, Follett had an argument with her husband, left her house, and simply disappeared. He did not look very hard for her, and police and the press weren’t even notified until 1966. It’s possible that she died, but it’s also possible that she disappeared very successfully. Maybe we even know her now under another name?
