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Hillsdale was named in 1856 when its citizens adopted the name inspired by the Hillsdale School, built on Pascack Road, and the now historic Hillsdale Railroad Station, which formally opened for business on March 4, 1870. Almost as soon as the train pulled in, houses began to be built overlooking the tracks along Broadway, then Summit Avenue. A general store and a hotel opened to accommodate the influx of people, putting Hillsdale on the map. Along with the railroad, the opening of the George Washington Bridge in the early 1930s brought waves of migration from the crowded cities of New York, Patterson, and Jersey City, with people looking for land, clean air and water, and a place within reasonable distance to job markets. The migration proceeded at a leisurely pace until it was brought to a halt by World War II, but it developed into an engulfing wave with the war's end and today has almost completely saturated Hillsdale's available space. Hillsdale has come a long way from its days as a sleepy farming community to a thriving and desirable New York suburb.

On October 17, 1999 Lissa Roche, the editor of Hillsdale College Press and the daughter-in-law of the conservative school's president, Dr. George Roche III, was found dead in Hillsdale's Slayton Arboretum. Police promptly ruled her death a suicide. But when the authorities suppressed portions of her autopsy, refused to perform a ballistics test on the .357 that ended her life, cross-check key alibis, or find the keys that Lissa supposedly used to access her husband's gun, Lissa's death became an unresolved mystery. Based on exclusive interviews with family, friends and faculty, previously unpublished documents and in-depth research with insiders, this book examines an extraordinary tragedy and lets the reader be the judge.