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73
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
52/100Critics
93/100Scholars
Author:
Kristine S. Ervin
Publisher:
Counterpoint
Date:
March 26, 2024
Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life. In her mother's absence, Ervin tries to reconstruct a woman she can never fully grasp-from her own memory, from letters she uncovers, and the stories of other family members. As more information about her mother's death comes to light, Ervin's drive to know her mother only intensifies, winding its way into her own fraught adolescence.
What The Reviewers Say
A devastating account from the other side of murder, outlining in stark detail the trauma we fail to recognize when we consume tragedy as entertainment.
Heartfelt.
This may be the best way true crime should be written, with nuance and unfettered compassion and with the words of the living victims or their families at the center..
Shattering.
