Author photo by Cary Hazlegrove
About Rosie Atkins
Rosie’s debut novel, Margaret is Missing: A Nantucket Noir, arrives in summer, 2027 from Harper Perennial. Inspired by the cold-case disappearance of a woman who vanished without trace from Nantucket Island, the gritty crime drama kicks off when a local teen goes on a joy ride with an enigmatic stranger. That ride cascades into a harrowing nightmare that will haunt the girl for years to come.
After a long career in the tech industry, Rosie turned her attention to fulfilling her lifelong dream of writing a novel. A thirteenth-generation Nantucketer, she divides her time between San Francisco, where she is a founding member of Page Street Writers, and Nantucket Island. Rosie has contributed to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Noe Valley Voice, Nantucket Today Magazine, and the Inquirer & Mirror, Nantucket’s weekly newspaper since 1821. Margaret is Missing is her first novel.
Rosie’s second book, another in the Nantucket Noir series, is targeted for publication in 2028.
Behind Margaret is Missing
Margaret is Missing is inspired by an unsolved cold case.
Doctor Margaret Kilcoyne arrived on Nantucket Island on January 23, 1980. Two days later, she disappeared from her home during the night. Police, Coast Guard, and many volunteers searched the remote area surrounding where she lived for days and found no trace of the woman. Investigators concluded that Dr. Kilcoyne took her own life by walking into the ocean.
Several days of stormy weather ensued. When the storm cleared, a group of dog walkers discovered a cache of her belongings in an outdoor area that had been thoroughly searched. Interest in the case exploded. What had been a private tragedy became a gripping mystery.
That winter, I was a senior at Nantucket High School and I was captivated by the case. My girlfriends and I spent weekends bumping over the moors in my cousin’s VW Beetle, hunting for clues, and imagining that each empty summer home and frozen kettle pond held the key to the mystery.
Winter faded into spring and the island’s collective preoccupation with the disappearance ebbed.
Years later, I was writing for the island’s weekly newspaper and I decided to re-examine the case file at the police station. I reviewed detective notes, official police reports, timelines, and forensics results. I handled the personal items that were found by the dog walkers, and listened to a cassette recording of Dr. Kilcoyne’s voice. The most striking items were hand-written letters from her friends. To a person, they held firm that she had not been manic or suicidal.
I came to believe that Margaret Kilcoyne was misunderstood, and that the truth of what happened to her was likely lost in the swirl of speculation, sensationalism, and cultural differences that surrounded the case.
The disappearance continued to haunt me. A few years ago, I came across a hunting stand in a wooded area, and I imagined an island girl pretending it was a crow’s nest on a whale ship. Further on, a pair of stands faced each other in a clearing and I conjured a couple on a secret date, flirting across the treetops under the cover of night.
I invented a fateful nighttime encounter between the girl, now a teenager, and the woman on the date. I explored how that encounter that would haunt the girl into her adulthood, and Margaret is Missing came to life.
Read more about the case in the Nantucket Current.