This is a compelling story. What I did that was smart was to see the potential of the story and work on it until I got it to its most dramatic form. Thirty years, I mean. One of the characteristics that make it a great story is aspects keep emerging over time that are arresting. The truth reveals herself through the haze of time. This is a story of powerful men abusing their power which is still relevant. It took me so many years to figure out the relationships, and then, how the relationships influenced what happened. It’s over a hundred years and people still see this as an unsolved murder.
I earnestly believe this story would do well in a major market. The industry does re-makes of stories we’ve seen before, and here is a riveting story people don’t know about. I’ve self-published, and the market is limited, and I want to take it beyond that, but I need contacts I don’t have. That’s why I’m beguiling you about it. I need help. I’m asking if you’d read the manuscript. It’s a hundred and forty-one pages. But I would be curious if you genuinely felt this story is not intriguing and captivating.
The editor I hired who didn’t know me or the story said, “It was a really interesting story and I’m so glad to have learned about it.” It would be a shame if others were denied the chance to have the same discovery. This is a simultaneous submission.
Thank-you for your time, Jack Coey
In August of 1918, Dr. Dean was found stuffed in a well on his farm in Jaffrey NH. after he asked a neighbor lady to send him a Department of Justice agent about signal lights, he saw from Mount Monadnock which is the first land sighting from the Atlantic Ocean. It was feared there were German spies watching troop movements from Fort Devens to Boston Harbor to ship to France, and then, signaling their ships in the Atlantic from the summit of Monadnock. Department of Justice agents came to the region to investigate the signal lights in April of 1918 under the Espionage Act of 1917. Mount Monadnock is 3000 feet in elevation and sixty miles from the ocean. Johann Von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to the US, visited Dublin NH., a town at the base of the mountain, twice, during the summer of 1916.
Dr. Dean had a hill-top farm two miles from Jaffrey, NH. and because he was an unconventional farmer, he milked his cow late in the morning and late at night which is when it was believed he saw the lights. He had a wealthy tenant living on his farm who didn’t work who the townspeople suspected of being a German spy. Dr. Dean and his tenant never got along, and Dr. Dean evicted the tenant from his farm in June of 1918.
The morning of his murder, Dr. Dean had a conversation with a neighbor woman and asked her to send him a Department of Justice as he had, “information to give.” That night he went to his barn and never came back. The following morning as the men from the village searched the farm, and found his body in a well, suspicions were on the German-spy evicted tenant until Mr. Rich, a prominent banker, and good long-time friend of Dr. Dean showed up with a black eye.
This is a true story and would make a wonderful movie.
I’ve written a 140-page, 22,000-word novella as fiction to dramatize the events.
