After The Eclipse
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. A fierce memoir of a mother’s murder, a daughter’s coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her mission to know the woman who gave her life.
When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse; she took it as a good omen for her and her mother, Crystal. But that moment of darkness foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine.
It took twelve years to find the killer. In that time, Sarah rebuilt her life amid abandonment, police interrogations, and the exacting toll of trauma. She dreamed of a trial, but when the day came, it brought no closure.
It was not her mother’s death she wanted to understand, but her life. She began her own investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, deep into the darkness of a small American town.
“Pull[ing] the reader swiftly along on parallel tracks of mystery and elegy” in After the Eclipse, “Perry succeeds in restoring her mother’s humanity and her own” (The New York Times Book Review).
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Community Reviews
The title of this novel caught my attention after having just experienced the solar eclipse of 2017, and after reading the synopsis, I requested to read it. Sarah Perry does a remarkable job recounting the harrowing tale of her mother's murder and the long wait to find her killer. It is obvious this book has been thoroughly researched and painstakingly recounted, and while Sarah's love for her mother clearly comes through, she does not let it alter the facts of the case. This is an important book that reminds the reader that social class, race, or gender should never affect how a crime is portrayed or perceived, and how each violent crime we read or hear about as we quickly swipe or turn the channel, has impacted and changed someone's life forever.
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