No Worst, There Is None

Former newspaper columnist McBride (Dandelions Help) has written a debut that is a compelling exploration of a family’s grief after the 11-year-old daughter is brutally sexually assaulted and then murdered. In an author’s note, McBride explains that the book was inspired by a crime that touched her own family in 1986 when the friend of one of her young daughters was similarly attacked and slain. The novel follows the Warne family, who live a life of privilege and relative innocence in the mid ’80s in an undisclosed North American city. Their lives are shattered the day the oldest daughter, Lizbett, fails to come home from a trip to the local library. Told from various points of view—including Lizbett’s mother and father, her sister, other characters connected to the family, and, disturbingly, the murderer, Melvyn Searle, who goes on to murder another girl—it is graphic, heart- and gut-wrenching reading, yet also about love and grief, motivation and healing, and the endurance of family and the human spirit. (Dec.)