Dec 01, 2005 — In July of 1906, a handsome young man named Chester Gillette was accused of drowning his pregnant girlfriend, Grace Brown, in a secluded cove at Big Moose Lake. Gillete's trial and execution is the basis for Theodore Dreiser's classic novel, "American Tragedy." At Gillete's trial in Herkimer, the prosecution read from Grace Brown's love letters. The last of those letters was written a week before her murder. The letter was read for North Country Public Radio by Jennifer Donnelly, author of a novel about the murder called "A Northern Light."