The Execution of Noa P. Singleton

At the start of attorney Silver’s searing debut, Noa Singleton, a convicted murderer on Pennsylvania’s death row scheduled to be executed in six months, receives an offer of help from the most unlikely of sources—her pregnant victim’s mother, Marlene Dixon. A high-powered Philadelphia lawyer, Marlene has changed her views on the death penalty and will champion a petition to commute Noa’s sentence to life in prison—if Noa reveals what drove her to kill her one-time University of Pennsylvania classmate. But is this a good-faith offer, or just an attempt by a grief-stricken and guilt-ridden mother to exact some final revenge? The appealing but morally anorexic Noa is left to wonder as she proffers tantalizing peeks of her past (or are they self-serving fictions?), from memories of her narcissistic, manipulative mother to the ex-con father she would have been better off never meeting. This devastating read stands less as a polemic against the death penalty than as a heartbreaking brief for the preciousness of life. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management. (June)