After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search

One night when she was 12, Perry awoke to her mother's screams as she was being stabbed to death in the house they shared in rural Maine. Accounts of Crystal Perry's life and her daughter's attempts to find her way afterward alternate in this distressing yet affirming debut memoir. Passed around among relatives, never really finding a home, and always feeling fearful and angry, Perry obsesses on the men who might have killed her mother. She recalls Crystal's life as a working-class single mom, living in a town full of alcoholism, dysfunction, and violence, and she remembers the closeness the two shared. Memories of her mother's scraping together enough money from hand-stitching moccasins to buy them a small house bring both solace and pain. Even considered a suspect herself at one point, Perry had to undergo intense police interrogation on and off for 12 years, until the killer was apprehended. Perry succeeds in revealing Crystal as a fun-loving, caring mother whose determination to survive inspired her daughter to achieve an education and succeed as a writer. Emily Woo Zeller captures each character's voice.