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    After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
    After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
    After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
    Audiobook13 hours

    After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search

    Written by Sarah Perry

    Narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine, just a few feet from Sarah's bedroom.

    The killer escaped unseen; it would take the police twelve years to find him, time in which Sarah grew into adulthood, struggling with abandonment, police interrogations, and the effort of rebuilding her life when so much had been lost. Through it all she would dream of the eventual trial, a conviction-all her questions finally answered. But after the trial, Sarah's questions only grew. She wanted to understand her mother's life, not just her final hours, and so she began a personal investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, taking her deep into the abiding darkness of a small American town.

    Told in searing prose, After the Eclipse is a luminous memoir of uncomfortable truth and terrible beauty, an exquisite memorial for a mother stolen from her daughter, and a blazingly successful attempt to cast light on her life once more.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateSep 26, 2017
    ISBN9781681686745
    After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
    Author

    Sarah Perry

    Sarah Perry is the author of Essex Girls, Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood. She has been the UNESCO City of Literature writer-in-residence in Prague and a Gladstone's Library writer-in-residence. Her work has been translated into twenty two languages. She lives in Norwich

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    Reviews for After the Eclipse

    4/5

    73 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Good story line. Just a tad too long, but I enjoyed it
    • 5/5
      When she was twelve years old, Sarah Perry woke up in her remote Maine home to the sound of her mother screaming. She knew almost immediately that someone was in their home and was killing her mother. She her the knife drawer open and a metal ring as a blade was removed. She heard each blow of the attacker and listened to her mother's diminishing cries. When their was silence, she ventured out to find help. She tried to call the police but couldn't get through. Then she walked down the dark street into the night, knocking at each door for help. It was several house before anyone came to her aid.For the remainder of her turbulent adolescence, Sarah would bounce around from one house to the next. Her closest relatives would not have her so she ended up staying with distant relations and family friends who were not exactly thrilled to have her as a responsibility. Throughout her growing up she was always aware that she was not wanted and could not count on any stability in her life.She was also frequently interviewed by the police who continued to be completely stumped by her mother's murder. The police would not believe that she didn't see or know her mother's killer. Her inability to provide them with the case-cracking information they desired eventually led them to briefly consider her as a possible suspect. Even after DNA cleared her mother's fiancee, the continued to pursue him as a suspect and failed to look at other possibilities. Finally, DNA evidence found the man who was responsible. A serial abuser who still lived in Sarah's hometown. Even with her mother's murderer in jail, Sarah realizes she will never truly feel safe. The murder of her mother proved to her that violence is always close by and cultural misogyny allows men to use and abuse women with impunity. This book is well-researched and painfully intimate. A thought-provoking and challenging read.
    • 4/5
      Wow! Such a tragic story. Sarah Perry openly shares about her mother’s murder when she was 12 years of age. She’s an excellent writer and story teller. She structures her book to fluctuate between her life chronologically before and after her mother’s death. It’s so heartbreaking to have lost her mother at that age and so tragically. To compound her situation, her father was not active in her life and she was bounced between family members living in different parts of the state or even out of state, often at a moment’s notice. I felt such compassion for her to have only felt accepted by family members instead of feeling wanted by them. The quality of the narration definitely brought about a somber vibe that added to the intensity of the story.
    • 5/5
      What struck me most about this moving memoir was the way the author so deftly showed the reader how others responded to her, how it made her feel, and how she understood their perspectives. When she felt like an outcast, I felt that way, too. I hadn't thought about how other kids at a school might say "That's weird" about another kid's mom being killed, or that a friend in New York, removed from any violence in her own life, might imply that her mother was killed because she was promiscuous. She showed us a side of a murder that was both upsetting and uncomfortable in a way I hadn't seen in a memoir like this before.
    • 4/5
      Equal parts true crime and gripping memoir. I had a really hard time putting this book down. Sarah Perry was 12 years old when she awoke in the middle of the night to the sounds of he mother being viciously murdered in the next room. This well-written book is the story of her mom, their lives together, the crime, and the aftermath. I loved her voice and her message. Very powerful.
    • 5/5
      Wow. This is a powerful book.

      In 1994, Sarah Perry’s mother, Crystal, was murdered in their home while Sarah was only a room away. It was a brutality I can’t even fathom. 12-year-old Sarah was thrust into a world of fear, abandonment, and unspeakable grief.

      More than a recounting of events, Sarah gives the reader the complete atmosphere of growing up in rural Maine, and the people of the small town of Bridgton that made up her world. She delves into the person her mother was, and what made her who she was. This memoir is an attempt to know her mother, from the perspective of a grown woman cognizant of her mother’s life choices, her anguish over on-again, off-again relationships, and her love for her daughter. This story is also Sarah’s journey to discover herself, as she was as a 12-year-old girl enduring unbelievable tragedy, and now as an adult understanding the whole picture of Crystal Perry as a person.

      So many adults in Sarah’s life tried to help her cope with this horrible “thing that happened,” but many were misguided in their kindness, or too blind with grief to offer anything of value. The fear that still resides in Sarah is palpable. It’s easy, as a reader, to think “this is an event that happened, once, a long time ago,” but for Sarah, it’s every day of her life, and she brings that idea to the forefront. Her memoir is courageous, it’s honest, and never indulges in self-pity.

      I appreciated Sarah’s candor. She acknowledges her faults, the mistakes all of us make as adolescents. She allows herself room to ask questions, to wonder about her mother’s motivations, the relationships she maintained with men and with her friends. She wonders about the fallacy of memory and about the unreliability of what you think you know about those close to you. The research is impeccable. Sarah refers to police transcripts, interviews, and personal remembrances, but this never reads like a sterile report; it’s like sitting with your best friend and listening to her tell you her story.

      I dropped everything else I was reading when I started reading After the Eclipse. It was compelling and at the same time humbling. Sarah’s foray into her past took unbelievable courage, and this memoir is a testament to her strength. The kind of strength, I’m sure, she got from her mother.


      Many thanks to Sarah Perry for the advance copy.
      This review is also posted on my blog at flyleafunfurled.com.
    • 4/5
      In her memories of life both before and after the brutal murder of her mother, Sarah Perry recounts the harrowing details of her dysfunctional family history, the long search to bring her mother's killer to justice and the loving bond she shared only with her mother. This is an absolutely riveting account of the strength it took for her to survive the loss of her mother.
    • 4/5
      Sarah woke in the middle of the night to her mother's screams. Paralyzed with fear, she listened as her mother was murdered. Shuffled from relative to relative, Sarah struggled to build a meaningful life. Years later, advances in forensics caught her mother's killer and he stood trial.This was an engaging and fascinating read. It was hard to put down. Sarah was very relatable. She struggled to learn about her mother and make sense of the senseless. Overall, well worth reading.