cover image Between Here and April

Between Here and April

Deborah Copaken Kogan, . . Algonquin, $23.95 (280pp) ISBN 978-1-56512-562-9

How could a mother kill her children? This breathtaking first novel from photojournalist Kogan (Shutterbabe ) attempts a heart-wrenching answer. Elizabeth “Lizzie” Burns Steiger, a 41-year-old TV producer/journalist, has a hallucination while watching a performance of Medea at a Manhattan theater; she sees her best friend in first grade, April Cassidy, who was killed by April's depressed mother, Adele, in 1972 in Potomac, Md., along with April's sister. In addition to exploring her memories in therapy, Lizzie interviews the Cassidys' former neighbor and others who knew the family for a proposed cable network documentary, but a priceless Pandora's box—tapes of Adele with her psychiatrist—provides the most startling revelations. Kogan skillfully interweaves Lizzie's struggles with her troubled marriage, parenting and a personal trauma shared in the Balkans with a former lover in this unflinching portrait of filicide, which still manages to find light in the darkness of a very disturbing subject. (Sept.)