After the Eclipse, Sarah Perry
After the Eclipse, Sarah Perry
5 Rating(s)
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
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After the Eclipse
A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search

Author: Sarah Perry

Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller

Unabridged: 13 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/26/2017

Synopsis

When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine, just a few feet from Sarah's bedroom.

The killer escaped unseen; it would take the police twelve years to find him, time in which Sarah grew into adulthood, struggling with abandonment, police interrogations, and the effort of rebuilding her life when so much had been lost. Through it all she would dream of the eventual trial, a conviction—all her questions finally answered. But after the trial, Sarah's questions only grew. She wanted to understand her mother's life, not just her final hours, and so she began a personal investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, taking her deep into the abiding darkness of a small American town.

Told in searing prose, After the Eclipse is a luminous memoir of uncomfortable truth and terrible beauty, an exquisite memorial for a mother stolen from her daughter, and a blazingly successful attempt to cast light on her life once more.

About Sarah Perry

Sarah Perry holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction from Columbia University, where she served as publisher of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art and was a member of the journal's nonfiction editorial board. She is the recipient of a Writers' Fellowship from the Edward F. Albee Foundation and a Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, and has attended residencies at Norton Island in Maine and PLAYA in Oregon. Perry's prose has appeared in Blood & Thunder magazine and Bluestockings Literary Journal. She lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

Goodreads review by JanB on November 10, 2017

This is such a well-written and powerful read. Sarah Perry was only 12 years old when her mother was murdered as she lay sleeping in the next room. The murder was particularly brutal and vicious and Sarah heard it as it was happening. It would take 12 years to find the murderer. Sarah’s story is one......more

Goodreads review by Ericka on April 04, 2017

Wow. This is a powerful book. In 1994, Sarah Perry’s mother, Crystal, was murdered in their home while Sarah was only a room away. It was a brutality I can’t even fathom. 12-year-old Sarah was thrust into a world of fear, abandonment, and unspeakable grief. More than a recounting of events, Sarah giv......more

Goodreads review by Preston on September 27, 2017

(I have a review copy.) I figured After the Eclipse was going to be heartbreaking, but I couldn't possibly have known it was going to be this good, this devastating, and this important. The whole world feels a little different. I'm stunned. It's (alarmingly) rare for someone to have something new to......more

Goodreads review by lucky little cat on February 08, 2019

Exemplary true crime memoir. Perry never loses sight of who she was as a child, and her account of her mother's murder unexpectedlyallows us to root for that child-self throughout the book. Perry's mother, Crystal, killed violently at age 30, had been doing everything right:......more

Goodreads review by Valerity (Val) on October 12, 2017

This is a beautifully written book about loss and coming of age by Sarah Perry. It's relatable with the recent eclipse we had too in a way, as the tragedy in her life happened just 2 days after she experienced an eclipse. Almost like it was a bad omen, her mother Crystal was killed in a horrific mur......more

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