After Her
Book - 2013
The New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day and The Good Daughters returns with a haunting novel of sisterhood, sacrifice, and suspense.
I was always looking for excitement, until I found some . . .
Summer, 1979. A dry, hot Northern California school vacation stretches before Rachel and her younger sister, Patty--the daughters of a larger-than-life, irresistibly handsome (and chronically unfaithful) detective father and the mother whose heart he broke.
When we first meet her, Patty is eleven--a gangly kid who loves basketball and dogs and would do anything for her older sister, Rachel. Rachel is obsessed with making up stories and believes she possesses the gift of knowing what's in the minds of people around her. She has visions, whether she wants to or not. Left to their own devices, the sisters spend their days studying record jackets, concocting elaborate fantasies about the mysterious neighbor who moved in down the street, and playing dangerous games on the mountain that looms behind their house.
When young women start turning up dead on the mountain, the girls' father is put in charge of finding the murderer known as the "Sunset Strangler." Watching her father's life slowly unravel as months pass and more women are killed, Rachel embarks on her most dangerous game yet . . . using herself as bait to catch the killer. But rather than cracking the case, the consequences of Rachel's actions will destroy her father's career and alter forever the lives of everyone she loves.
Thirty years later, still haunted by the belief that the killer remains at large, Rachel constructs a new strategy to smoke out the Sunset Strangler and vindicate her father--a plan that unexpectedly unearths a long-buried family secret.
Loosely inspired by the Trailside Killer case that terrorized Marin County, California, in the late 1970s, After Her is part thriller, part love story. Maynard has created a poignant, suspenseful, and painfully real family saga that traces a young girl's first explorations of sexuality, the loss of innocence, the bond shared by sisters, and the tender but damaged relationship between a girl and her father that endures even beyond the grave.
0062257390



Opinion
From the critics

Community Activity

Comment
Add a Commenti loved, loved, loved this book! The writer has really understood the mind and heart of a pre-teen... all the feelings her characters feel could be us at any time in our young life. This story got you so interested...all wrapped up in a mystery that never lets go! Read her other books and you won;t be disappointed! Very enjoyable! I recomend her other book Labour Day, thats another one that you wont want to put down! Excellent!!
All the elements in a book that I love are in this fabulous book. Murder, a coming-of-age story, surprise, imagination. I just loved this book and all the characters. They will stay with me a long while. The writing is just beautiful.
This one was fun. It was based on true events, but was, of course, a novel. The characters were engaging, the story was engrossing and it was good escapism. The writing style was pretty good and the book held my interest to the end.
"Thirty years after destroying her detective father's career and altering the lives of everyone she loves, Rachel, who has never given up hope of vindicating her father, finally finds The Sunset Strangler, a killer who, in the summer of 1979, preyed on young women in northern California." Fiction A to Z October 2013 newsletter http://www.nextreads.com/Display2.aspx?SID=5acc8fc1-4e91-4ebe-906d-f8fc5e82a8e0&N=691547