BERLIN – When a Parkside High School English teacher was murdered in 2011, former student Stephanie Fowler knew she would one day write a book about the educator’s inspiring life.
Now, nearly nine years later, the local author has announced the release of her new publication, “Chasing Alice.”
A synopsis for the book reads, “On Sunday, September 4th, 2011, Alice Davis, a respected and beloved English teacher at Parkside High School in Salisbury, Maryland, vanished. Her disappearance shocked the community and left her family, friends, fellow teachers, and students fearing the worst. Within days, her husband, Jess Davis, committed suicide just as the police were closing in on him as their prime suspect. Alice’s body was soon discovered in the woods near their home and the terrible crime came to a swift conclusion. But what remains? For one of Alice’s students, Stephanie L. Fowler, the heartbreaking loss of her high school mentor set her on a journey to honor the teacher she loved. Part memoir, true crime, biography, and cautionary tale, Chasing Alice examines Alice’s life, reveals the dangers of isolation and domestic violence, and seeks to preserve the legacy of a woman who touched the lives of many.”
Fowler said she began writing “Chasing Alice” nearly three years after the murder of her former English teacher. As an aspiring writer in high school, Fowler said she leaned on Davis for guidance and support.
“She took me under her wing and mentored me,” she said. “She nurtured my writing aspiration and also became a safe harbor for me, someone that I could come to and explain what was going on in my life.”
Fowler said she kept in touch with Davis, even after graduating high school. But when Fowler returned to work after the Labor Day weekend in 2011, she was shocked to learn Davis had gone missing.
“I knew right then that something really wrong had happened, something bad,” she said. “She was not the kind of person who would go missing. She was very structured, she set the pace and we all followed. She was an English teacher who loved cats and books. It was not the kind of person who would go up and missing.”
When Davis’s body was found nearly a week later, and police concluded the investigation into her murder, Fowler said she was heartbroken.
“It was hard to reconcile the brutality of her end with the light I knew her to be when she was alive,” she said.
To that end, Fowler began working on a non-fiction piece about Davis’s life.
The cover of the new non-fiction book, “Chasing Alice,” is pictured. Submitted Image
“I knew I’d write about it, but didn’t know when or how,” she said. “It wasn’t until two or three years after the murder that I thought maybe I could do a longform non-fiction piece. I started to do that but then I realized that there was more to the story to tell.”
Fowler said “Chasing Alice” is her first full-length book, which offers insight into Davis’s life and death.
“Alice loved Shakespeare, and a Shakespeare play has five acts, so I divided the book into five parts as an homage to her love of Shakespeare,” she said. “Each part is like a small vignette.”
In the six years it took to write her book, Fowler examined police, autopsy and toxicology reports and talked to Davis’s sisters, friends, neighbors, teachers and former students, in addition to law enforcement personnel involved in the case.
“I wanted to tell the story of who she was. She was more than a murder victim,” Fowler said. “That was one of the reasons I wanted to write the book because every time I talked about her people would say ‘Isn’t that the teacher from Parkside who got murdered?’ I hated the fact that some people knew of her because of her worst day.”
Fowler said the book also includes resources and information on domestic violence.
“What if someone makes a change in their own life because they recognize something from her story? And what if her story rewrites the ending for someone else?” she said.
“Chasing Alice” is set to be released in September. For more information, or to pre-order a copy of the book, visit www.stephaniefowler.net.
