A Crime in the Neighborhood: A Novel - Tapa dura

In the summer of 1972, in a suburb of Washington, D.C., the body of a twelve-year-old boy was found near a shopping mall. He had been sexually molested and then murdered. The worst crime came later. Marsha Eberhardt was ten years old at the time of the murder. The story of how she reacted is as disturbing as the murder itself. As the adult Marsha looks back on that summer and recounts the events, she sees herself as an almost fanatically vigilant little girl edging as close as possible to every disturbance. There were all kinds of disturbances -- the murder, the break-in at the Watergate that Walter Cronkite kept talking about, Marsha's own family's upheaval. Her father had deserted her. Her teenaged siblings were shoplifting. Her mother was flirting with the new neighbor next door. When the summer dragged on and on without the police solving the murder, Marsha felt compelled to put the "evidence" she'd been collecting to use. How do crimes that we witness or commit as children continue to haunt us years later? Can we ever escape the wrongs we've done, or the wrongs done to us? Marsha Eberhardt, a child of the seventies -- of the first generation to grow up believing there's no such thing as "good" government, "safe" neighborhoods, or "stable" families -- finds herself turning this question over and over in her mind.

Suzanne Berne has taught at Harvard University and Wellesley College.