See How Small

On an ordinary day in Austin, TX, Kate Ulrich's two teenage daughters and their friend are brutally murdered while closing up an ice cream shop. Five years after the still unsolved crime, the three girls are a collective "we"—visiting and observing Kate, their other parents, the man who found them, and witnesses. The stories of the victims and the traumatized survivors are told in nonlinear, dreamlike snatches—memories surfacing or vignettes from past and present. The girls float in and out of focus for the reader and the survivors, unable to break through the very thin barrier separating the living and the dead. The characters are compellingly troubled, but frequent shifts in perspective remind readers how little one can actually know about another person, whether they have a tragically short lifetime or not.