"A 35-year-old unsolved murder. Mary’s murder gripped the town of Partick for years after her death.
A cold case reawakened because of the Daily Record with women at the heart of it. The victim, the daughter, the detective, the forensic scientist, the reporter.
For 35 years Gina McGavin hunted for her mother’s killer.
Mary McLaughlin’s senseless brutal murder ignited in Gina a deep sense of injustice and an insatiable need to seek the truth about her death.
The two women had only just begun to work on their broken relationship with Gina finding ways to forgive her mother for abandoning the family home when Gina was just two years old. Now she felt abandoned again and it awakened in her an obsessive quest that would overshadow her whole life.
Gina unravels family secrets and revelations about her mother as she began to suspect that some close to her knew more about Mary’s murder than they were letting on.
She puts family members on the spot and rakes over every detail she can find to not only lead her to a killer but to understand who her mother was and why she abandoned her family.
Gina delves into potential suspects, discovers shocking details about her family and explores how her mother’s death has impacted her own life, her marriage, her relationships and when the case is finally solved by police, it leaves Gina with unanswered questions. She doesn’t believe the man convicted acted alone.
This is the extraordinary journey of a daughter’s search for truth and justice for the mother she never really knew."
"Winner of the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel, this exquisite book confronts real-life issues of alienation and violence from which the author creates a stunning testament to the human capacity for mercy, compassion and love.
“An American beauty this book. … The narrator of Jane Hamilton’s sensational first novel is a holy lusty innocent.”—Vogue"
