Just Jennifer

Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight (Harper, April 2015)

The author of the 2013 hit Reconstructing Amelia is back with her sophomore effort, a chilling tale with secrets that go back decades in a small Northern New Jersey town, affecting the lives of four women and their families in most unforeseen ways. Molly, her husband Justin and their five-year-old daughter have moved to Ridgedale (a Morristown/Madison-esque town) where Justin has just gotten a job at the university.  Molly, normally the features writer for the local paper, is assigned to cover the story of a baby’s body found on the outskirts of the campus, a story that is a little too close to home for Molly who is still grieving for her stillborn baby.  Barbara, the wife of the police chief, seems to have everything under control until her five-year-old son begins acting out and her seventeen-year-old daughter Hannah becomes more withdrawn; sixteen-year-old Sandy has dropped out of high school and is being tutored by Hannah for her GED.  Sandy is also searching for her mother Jenna who has disappeared taking Sandy’s emergency money with her.  As Molly begins to work on her story, she begins to find cracks in the façade of the seemingly perfect and finds honesty in unexpected places.  Carefully plotted and laid out, sometimes a little too much so, Where They Found Her uncovers secrets never meant to be in the first place and delves into some very disturbing subjects as Molly searches for the identity of the baby and unravels the twisted strands of lives that prove to be much closer to home than she thought.