In 1906, Chester Gillette drowned his girlfriend, Grace Brown, on Big Moose Lake in New York after she informed him she was pregnant. Gillette was found guilty and executed by the electric chair. The case attracted national attention when Brown's love letters to Gillette were read aloud during the trial and sold in booklet form outside the courtroom. Author Theodore Dreiser was among those fascinated by the saga and used many of the key components to write his classic novel of crime and punishment, An American Tragedy.
In Dreiser's novel, Clyde Griffiths is a poor relation to a factory owner who catches a glimpse of the glamorous life through his romance with a society girl he meets through his wealthy relatives. Standing in the way of the attainment of his dreams is a fellow factory employee, who is pregnant and pressuring Clyde to do right by her. What is an upwardly mobile guy to do but take her out in a boat on a lake? It is a tale of conflict, conscience, and the polarization of socioeconomic classes. The novel was made into the 1951 classic film A Place in the Sun starring a luminous Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
Fast forward to the present and see how the reimagining of this familiar story of a fatal love triangle and ambition plays out in the modern world of social media influencers in The Anatomy of Desire by L.R. Dorn. L.R. Dorn is the pseudonym for Matt Dorff and Suzanne Dunn, who both come from the world of film and television. Told in the form of a true crime podcast, this courtroom drama plays out in a binge-worthy way. It is a fascinating glimpse into the world of influencers and how they connect and reconcile their real selves to their online personas. The Anatomy of Desire is a worthy standalone but what makes it extra fun is tracing the familiar elements of the story back through the film, the classic novel, and the original true crime sensation.
Holly Raus
Youth Specialist
Cumming Library
#WeKnowBooks
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