Murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in the United States, inspiration for Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.
Grace Mae Brown (March 20, 1886 – July 11, 1906) was a young American woman who was drowned by her boyfriend, Chester Gillette, on Big Moose Lake, New York, after she told him she was pregnant. The events and trial of the suspect attracted national newspaper attention.
Brown's life has inspired such fictional treatments as Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy, and Jennifer Donnelly's 2003 novel A Northern Light. The murder was analyzed and explored in two non-fiction books, both published in 1986: Adirondack Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case of 1906, written by Joseph W. Brownell and Patricia A. Wawrzaszek, and Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited, by Craig Brandon.