Just Jennifer

Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little (Viking, August 4, 2014)

Janie Jenkins has just been released from prison after a DNA lab scandal, after serving ten years for the murder of her mother, a murder Janie doesn't think she committed, but can’t say with complete certainty she didn't.  With help from her defense attorney, Janie chops off the long red hair the teen-aged party-girl was noted for and creates a new identity, Rebecca Parker, in hopes of uncovering who did murder her glamorous, philanthropic mother, even if the investigation leads right back to her.  Janie was high and drunk the night she found her mother’s beaten, dead body but Janie remembers hearing an unfamiliar man’s voice in her mother’s bedroom while in the closet looking for cash to steal from her mother.  The only words she remembers hearing are “Tessa, Adeline, and Jane”.  Finding a town in South Dakota named Adeline while reading in the prison jail sparks something in Janie who heads northeast from California to see if she can uncover the truth behind her mother’s past, all the while trying to keep a low profile from the hate mongers and press who still consider her guilty of the murder or who are just looking for another story.  In a small town in South Dakota, Janie’s mother’s past is slowly revealed, a past, Janie realizes, she knew nothing of; Janie realizes Ardelle, Adeline’s twin town, has a lot of secrets, secrets that its residents keep, both knowingly and unwittingly.  Soon Janie realizes she needs to trust some people with her secrets to get the answers she seeks.  A debut thriller, Dear Daughter is written with an assuredness of a more seasoned writer, drawing readers slowly into Janie’s tale, making her an unreliable, yet sometimes sympathetic, narrator.  As hardened as Janie became in prison, she still remembers that a butter knife is to have its blade turned into the plate, has not entirely lost her sense of humor, but knows when the point comes when she has nothing left to lose.  A strong setting with a lot of local history interwoven with Janie’s search and descriptions and dialogue that bring characters to life, this is a book to be read in one sitting and then be left waiting eagerly for the next one from this new author.