A missing nun and a small northern town add up to a riveting murder mystery in Mardi Link’s latest true-crime book Despite hundreds of searchers, Sister Janina’s body wasn’t found in the church basement for a decade; other secrets about the murder remained buried until Link completed her research
On August 23, 1907, Sister Janina waved goodbye to her priest, who was headed out for an afternoon of fishing, and retired to her convent cell to take a nap. She was never seen again. The young Felician nun lived in Isadore, Michigan, a tiny town in the state’s sparsely populated Leelanau Peninsula. But that didn’t stop her case from making national waves.
Hundreds of volunteers turned out for the search, but she remained missing for more than a decade – until her body was discovered, buried in the dirt floor of the church basement, during a construction project.
Author Mardi Link created her own building project with this true-crime book, carefully constructing the facts around the young nun’s disappearance with documents, original research, and interviews with the family members of those involved – who, as it turned out, still had some new information to share more than 100 years later. This dramatic and readable tale would be a terrific crime novel – but it’s all the more shocking as a work of non-fiction. |
