The Button Field: A Novel

by Gail Husch

On November 18, 1897, Bertha Lane Mellish, a student at Mount Holyoke College disappeared from the campus. A minister’s daughter, twenty years younger than her only sister, Bertha was the pride of her small family. More comfortable with books than people, she left the genteel poverty of her Connecticut home hoping for a happier life at college. But what she found there, and what she learned at the mill where she worked her final summer, drove her beyond the sheltering walls of school and family. THE BUTTON FIELD is a work of fiction, imagined from research about the real Bertha Mellish. It is coming-of-age story and a mystery, an exploration of a young woman’s hopes and expectations, of the face she showed the world and the desires she hid. And, ultimately, The Button Field investigates the space between what we can and what we will never know about the workings of another’s heart. “ . . .The Button Field is more than a vivid and accurate representation of another time and place. Bertha’s vanished world reflects our own; she reappears to tell us something about the way our lives are lived, by comparison to hers. In the end, the author’s inquiring eye is twinned with the eye of the reader.” --Madison Smartt Bell

Genres: Fiction, Dark Academia, Historical Fiction

348 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2014

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I forget how I ran across this book, but having attended Mount Holyoke I was attracted both by the mystery and the setting. When someone said she walked from Brigham to Porter or to the village green I knew exactly where she was. The school of the 1890s hadn't broken with its evangelical past yet. Bertha was one of probably a ton of ministers' children attending the school.
A sense of dread hangs over the book, which makes it difficult to put down. All the created characters are interesting, and although they seem extremely unusual, it's more an exaggeration of the ordinary than anything truly strange. Bertha is a believable character who is both naive and misanthropic; it would have taken so little for her life at the school to be different, but she is ever more locked into herself.
It's hard to believe that after over 100 years no trace of her was ever found. The Connecticut River only gets wider and slower as it moves south. Still a mystery.

[J.M. Reinbold · Rating 5 out of 5]

The highest praise I can give this book is that I could not put it down. It is gorgeously written and rich with historical detail brilliantly rendered, but on top of all that The Button Field is a page-turner. It is a perfect blend of literature and genre. There is a dark current running through the life of Bertha Mellsih that she is barely aware of as she begins her collegiate journey. But as time passes, that dark current grows wider and deeper and all-consuming. The Button Field is a mystery in reverse. It presents all the clues, but none of the answers. That is left for the reader to decipher at the story's shocking conclusion. As you go over and over in your mind each event, each conversation, each decision, each action that make up the course of this young woman's life, can you unravel the mystery of Bertha Mellish?

[Marguerite · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great mystery of a real missing college student at Mount Holyoke but is long forgotten there. I recommend since it is so different from most.

[Ellen Curran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really probably 3.5 stars. It couldn't quite decide if it was pure novel based on real people or a novelization of real events. I did like the ending but overall, not as good as I'd hoped

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Button Field is an intriguing and beautifully written fiction story from a real photo and newspaper clip. Couldn't put it down!

[Amy H. Sturgis · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This is a haunting Dark Academia work inspired by the real-life disappearance of student Bertha Mellish from Mount Holyoke College in 1897. The author, Gail Husch, is an expert on the time period and the case; her website features primary sources that inform the novel.

Another novel inspired by the same case, Killingly by Katharine Beutner, will be published in the summer of 2023, and I will be very interested to see how the two compare.