Rabbit Heart: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Story

Poet and essayist Ervin grapples in her moving debut memoir with the emotional damage caused by a parent’s violent death. In 1986, when Ervin was eight years old, her mother, Kathy, was kidnapped from an Oklahoma shopping mall. Days later, her body was found in an oil field, but it would be years before the details of her rape and murder were revealed, and decades before a suspect was identified. Ervin writes candidly of the ways her mother’s absence and the lack of closure around the case left her ill-equipped to handle hardships including sexual abuse from the men in her life and a sour relationship with her father. Then, in 2008, long after Ervin had given up hope for a conviction, a DNA match turned up the name of one of the men who abducted her mother. He was already incarcerated for an unrelated crime, and agreed to extend his previous sentence to life in prison instead of standing trial or submitting an admission of guilt. (The second suspect was identified two years later, after his death.) In lucid prose, Ervin unflinchingly documents her grief and untangles how her mother’s murder impacted myriad aspects of her life. This will haunt readers long after they’ve turned the last page. Agent: Mary Krienke, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Mar.)