Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2008
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
When a deep-rooted memory suddenly surfaces, Elizabeth Burns becomes obsessed with the long-ago disappearance of her childhood friend April Cassidy. Driven to investigate, Elizabeth discovers a thirty-five-year-old newspaper article revealing the details that had been hidden from her as a child: April's mother, Adele, drove with her two young daughters deep into the woods where she killed first them and then herself.
Elizabeth, now a mother herself, tracks down everyone—Adele Cassidy's neighbor, her psychiatrist, her sister—who might give her the insight necessary to understand how a mother could commit such a monstrous crime.
Elizabeth's investigation leads her back to herself: her compromised marriage, her demanding children, her increasing self-doubt, her desire for more out of her own life, and finally to a fearsome reckoning with what it means to be a mother and wife.
"Starred Review. [An] unflinching portrait of filicide, which still manages to find light in the darkness of a very disturbing subject." - Publishers Weekly.
"The ending is both predictable and absurd, and Kogan provides a coda that is so sentimental and improbable that it's an insult to the reader. Grossly disappointing." - Kirkus Reviews.
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Deborah Copaken Kogan's first book, Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War, was a Barnes and noble discover selection, was serialized in Talk magazine, and was optioned for film. Her writing and photographs have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, O: The Oprah Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Self, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Paris Match, Stern, and der Spiegel. She was an Emmy Award–winning television producer at ABC and for Dateline NBC.
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