This fascinating new biography concentrates on this central mystery of the writer's life, one that was to have a profound effect on her later behavior and an episode to which she was ever afterwards profoundly anxious to avoid allusion. Cade has uncovered a wealth of startling new evidence including firsthand accounts by relatives and intimate contemporaries that make it apparent why Agatha disappeared and what she did in the first few days of her disappearance, and how it all went terribly wrong.