Spoken in Darkness

In this mesmerizing account Ann Imbrie recreates the lost life of her childhood friend, Lee Snavely, a beautiful and talented young woman who wound up a drug addict, a prostitute and the victim of a serial killer. They grew up together in a small town in Ohio in the 1960's, "the perfect setting for impossible accidents, disasters that cannot happen, and do". In this world of seemingly placid surfaces, Lee was the stranger Ann was taught to fear. One young woman becomes a literature professor at Vassar; the other spirals downward into a life of poverty and petty crime that leads inexorably to a violent death. Years later, in order to understand her friend's fate, Ann retraces Lee's steps and must confront anew taboos in her own family and in her hometown. Written with the pacing and evocative language of a novel, Spoken in Darkness vividly chronicles the lives of Lee Snavely and the man who murdered her - and deftly dissects the society that bred them both. The result is a work of heartfelt remembrance and harrowing revelation, a stunning exploration and indictment of the many faces of institutional indifference. This haunting, profoundly moving meditation on the dangers women face combines insightful storytelling with brilliant reportage in the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. This is a remarkable debut.