The letters went out in mid-February.
Each letter invited its recipient to spend a week at Camp So-and-So, a
lakeside retreat for girls nestled high in the Starveling Mountains. Each
letter came with a glossy brochure with photographs of young women
climbing rocks, performing Shakespearean theatre under the stars,
and spiking volleyballs. Each letter was signed in ink by the famed and
reclusive businessman and philanthropist, Inge F. Yancey IV.
By the end of the month, twenty-five applications had been
completed, signed, and mailed to a post office box in an obscure
Appalachian town.
Had any of these girls tried to follow the directions in the brochure
and visit the camp for themselves on that day in February, they would
have discovered that there was no such town and no such mountain and
that no one within a fifty-mile radius had ever heard of Camp So-and-So.
