How Will I Know You?
A Novel
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4.0 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A People Magazine "Book of the Week."
"Jessica Treadway draws her characters into an impossible knot and then expertly teases apart...kept me up half the night." -- Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth
Fans of Reconstructing Amelia will love this pulse-pounding novel of mystery, betrayal, and a small town's dark secrets.
On a cold December day, the body of high school senior Joy Enright is discovered in the woods at the edge of a frozen pond. Her death looks like a tragic drowning accident at first, but an autopsy reveals something sinister -- the teenager's body shows unmistakable signs of strangulation. The discovery upends an otherwise uneventful small town, as police grapple with a rare homicide case and those closest to Joy wonder how she could have been taken from them -- and by whom. Susanne, Joy's mother, tries to reconcile past betrayals with their wrenching consequences. Martin, an African-American graduate student, faces ostracism when blame is cast on him. Tom, a rescue diver and son-in-law of the town's police chief, doubts both the police's methods and his own perceptions. And Harper, Joy's best friend, tries to figure out why she disappeared from Harper's life months before she actually went missing.
In a close-knit community where everyone knows someone else's secret, it's only a matter of time before the truth is exposed. In this gripping novel, author Jessica Treadway explore the ways in which families both thrive and falter, and how seemingly small bad choices can escalate - with fatal consequences.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Treadway's predictable novel, less a mystery than a meditation on loss and betrayal, missing teen Joy Enright is found strangled to death at the edge of a frozen pond in upstate New York. The interim police chief is determined to convict Martin Willett, a black graduate student. Martin recently ended an affair with Joy's white mother, Susanne, who was his teacher and was spotted near the scene when Joy vanished. Martin maintains his innocence, though, and Susanne is desperate to believe him, so she hires the chief's son-in-law, Tom, to investigate. The book weaves back and forth in time, with Martin, Susanne, Tom, and Joy's best friend, Harper, sharing the narrative. Treadway (Lacy Eye) explores the effect of Joy's death on her family and their community, in addition to examining racism's role in small-town justice. Unfortunately, while Susanne is a fully fleshed character whose guilt and grief are palpable, everyone else is a caricature, undercutting the plot's heft and depth.
