by M. O. Walsh
First published 2015
The narrator remembers the summer of 1989 in his Baton Rouge neighborhood, where families gathered for crawfish boils and talked endlessly about LSU football. That summer, fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson ruled their suburban street. She ran track, drew admirers, and seemed to float through life with natural grace. Then one night, someone attacked her near her home. The violent crime shattered the community's sense of safety and exposed secrets that had been hiding beneath the surface of their seemingly perfect lives. The narrator, who harbored his own feelings for Lindy, watches as families splinter and suspicions tear neighbors apart. He struggles with his adolescent desires, his family's problems, and his desperate need to understand what happened to the girl he couldn't stop thinking about. Walsh captures how one terrible event can reveal the fault lines running through a place and its people.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Period: 1989
306 pages · Hardcover · Amy Einhorn Books
Content warnings: violence