March 15, 2024
Ervin was eight years old when her mother was abducted, raped, and brutally murdered. Twenty-five years later, at the plea hearing, Ervin confronts the man who killed her mother and tells him, "You will die behind bars and barbed wire, [. . .] while I, I will be living a life absent of you." In this lyrical, genre-defying memoir, Ervin intertwines the painful and tedious search for her mother's killer with overarching themes of grief, gender, and coming-of-age. She examines all of her experiences through the lens of her mother's absence, tenderly asking what her life would be like if her mother hadn't been taken from her. She writes about going through puberty, getting her period for the first time, and being sexually abused. Her observations around gender are particularly sharp and at times heart-wrenching. No matter how hard the material, and it's all either hard or bittersweet, Ervin approaches her story with unflinching vulnerability. Throughout, she's also searching for meaning and reckoning, which she eventually finds alongside her brother, "through the power of language and grief." This may be the best way true crime should be written, with nuance and unfettered compassion and with the words of the living victims or their families at the center.
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