The Singing Bone

In 1979 four high school friends meet a charismatic older man who invites them to join his family, and all four willingly become part of Mr. Wyck's household. Between the sex and the drugs, the Wyckian lifestyle is intoxicating. Occasionally one of the four expresses doubts about what they are doing, but there is always someone to justify their behavior, citing love as the compelling force in their lives. Alice, one of the three young women in the group of longtime friends, gradually slips into madness, so obsessed with the idea that they were acting in a play that she becomes unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. Listeners eventually learn that horrific crimes were committed in 1979. Twenty years later, Alice is a professor of folklore when a filmmaker threatens to expose her past with a documentary about Jack Wyck's crimes and the cultlike following he continues to attract from his prison cell. Details come in bits and pieces as the stories of 1979 and 1999 play out. Unfortunately, this story would benefit from abridgment; many details add little to the story. Narrator Hillary Huber reads the female voices sweetly and provides appropriate male personae.