Description: New York City tabloid reporter Rebekah Roberts knows almost nothing about the mother who abandoned her as an infant. Aviva Kagan was just a teenager when she left her Hasidic Jewish life in Brooklyn for a fling with a college boy from Florida - and then disappeared. When Rebekah hears about a young Hasidic mother found dead in her bathtub in upstate New York, she thinks there might be a story in it. And as she looks closer, she discovers that the woman once knew Aviva's younger brother, Sam. Rebekah realizes she might finally be in a position to meet her mother, but the more she learns about the woman's death, the more she begins to fear that Sam might be a ticking time bomb - whose anger is aimed at the strict Jewish community he left behind. In the sequel to her Edgar Award-nominated Invisible City, Julia Dahl has created another powerful novel, at once an examination of the demons we inherit and a taut mystery that will grip readers from the opening page to the stunning conclusion.
Brief description: Julia Dahl is the author of Conviction, Run You Down, and Invisible City, which was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, one of the Boston Globe's Best Books of 2014, and has been translated into eight languages. A former reporter for CBS News and the New York Post, she now teaches journalism at NYU.
Review Quotes:
"A treat...Strong, blunt prose." --The New York Times Book Review
"Bringing together the hyenas of tabloid journalism with the secretive, inwardly focused, self-protecting religious Jews, Dahl manages to demonize and humanize both, while delivering a riveting story." --The Boston Globe "Fast-paced, suspenseful...rises above the crime novel genre in its unusual psychological, spiritual and sociological dimensions, entering a world unfamiliar to most people." --The Washington Post "Invisible City is an absolutely crackling, unputdownable mystery told by a narrator with one big, booming voice. I loved it." --Gillian Flynn "[An] impressive debut...Dahl's convincing dialogue and perfect pacing make for a real page-turner. And her storytelling skills illuminate the intriguing worlds of the tabloid press, Hasidism, the NYPD, and Brooklyn's 20-somethings-as well as the fragile boundaries of family, religion, and life itself." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)