In 1967 Leslie Ware’s 73-year-old great aunt Julia Cox Bryant was raped and strangled to death in her small cottage in Durham, Connecticut. Bryant’s foster son, who lived upstairs, was charged with the murder, tried, and acquitted. For the next fifty-plus years, police forgot about the case. They reopened it in 2019, after Ware began asking questions. Dear Miss Bryant is a family memoir and murder mystery. It’s the story of a woman born into a life of exceptional privilege and renown who nevertheless cared nothing for money and dedicated her life to teaching others, a woman so memorable and peculiar that in the small town where she spent her adult life, she was still being celebrated five decades after her death. She was ahead of her time, a feminist (though she would not have called herself one) who rode horseback to teach school in rural Kentucky; took foster sons on a 900-mile bicycle trip around Europe when in her sixties (they usually slept outdoors); fell in love and was jilted by an Arctic explorer; advocated for peace; and was learning new things until her dying day. Ware weaves in quirky family traits that made Julia who she was, re-creates the quick, problem-plagued trial of the accused killer, and details her quest for remaining evidence that might unravel the mystery of Julia’s death. That search led her through an array of government officials until she reached three state police officers who apologized for dropping the ball for decades and began to look for answers.