Description
In the tradition of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Jessica Treadway delivers a haunting and riveting novel about a woman who might have to face the unsettling truth about her own daughter.
Hanna and Joe could never have suspected that the happiness of their youngest daughter, Dawn, would lead to the shattering of their lives. When Dawn introduces her new boyfriend, Rud, to her parents and sister, they temper their troubled feelings because they're glad that Dawn, always an awkward child, seems to have blossomed. But when Hanna and Joe are savagely beaten in their bed, Rud is the suspect. Joe dies, and Hanna, who survives, begins to inhabit a world of coping, denial, regret, and wistful remembrances of her family. When Rud wins an appeal and Dawn returns to the family home, Hanna is forced to recall that traumatic night so she can testify in the retrial and keep her husband's murderer in jail. As those memories resurface, Hanna must finally confront the reality of who her own child has become.