Our Tragedy
Janes #1
A wife accused of murder. A teenager searching for answers. A neighbor who knows everyone’s secrets.
Kore’s doting husband is murdered in broad daylight mere steps outside their front door. Her life in shambles, all she wants to do is hide away and grieve her loss. But a shocking photo taken at the crime scene is made public, and she finds herself dodging the press and defending her innocence.
Hannah, a less-than-popular teen with striking turquoise hair, overhears a conversation between classmates just minutes before finding out about her favorite teacher’s murder. She worries that his killer might be walking the halls with her, and soon, everyone becomes a suspect.
Their neighbor, Clarence, keeps a journal of everything that goes on in his small cul de sac. Secrets are being harbored behind each door and window. After his neighbor’s death, he begins to wonder who was willing to kill to keep theirs buried.
For fans of Liane Moriarty and Gillian Flynn comes a novel about the ripple effect of grief created by one man’s murder through the eyes of his widow, one of his brightest students, and his ever-nosy neighbor.
Top to bottom, left to right: 1. The evidence bag Our Tragedy always comes in. / 2. The Taylor Swift As Books matchup. Such a good Instagram! / 3. Our Tragedy in the wild. / 4. Clarence's mood board / 5. Hannah's mood board / 6. Kore's mood board (Unlike most times, I don't have credits for these mood boards. I got everything from Pinterest years ago.)
Excerpt:
Sunday
Kore
Kore skids to her husband’s body. The skin on her knees scrapes and tears on the sidewalk—a hot press to the childish burns.
Her voice comes out broken, hoarse. “Leo? Leo, wake up!” Limp, he doesn’t respond.
Far off, Kore hears a siren. She imagines it’s for them, and someone is rushing their way with a gurney and defibrillator, oxygen, needles, bandages, and bags of O-negative. Thick warmth oozes beneath her fingers as she tries to staunch the bleeding. Leo’s stomach and chest are covered in the cheap merlot they toasted with on their wedding day because he hates champagne.
Her screams fall flat in the oceanic silence of a childless cul de sac Sunday afternoon. Leo’s chest hasn’t risen; it’s as still as the vanity rocks beside their mailbox.
Kore knows the moment her lips touch his that he’s gone. She just kissed these lips; they moved with hers, warm from a late morning coffee and chapped from the too-cold Spring.
Taking a deep inhale, she offers her life to him. Two breaths, three. Kore realizes she can’t remember how to properly perform rescue breathing. Four breaths, six. She presses on his ribcage, and her hands slip. It happens again with the second compression.
Nothing’s happening. “Wake up, Leo! Get up! Don’t do this to me! I love—”
Kore presses a kiss against his bloody chest as she does every morning, only this time without the expectation that it will rouse him. She surrenders to the already lost battle and briefly wonders if she’ll be able to hear sirens over her pounding heart—now beating for two.
Clarence
Asian Female + Ginger Male
—Detectives
—Late
—Female seems to be in charge
—Male pudgy officer is attracted to female (she pays him no mind)
—This makes 5 officers and the M.E. so far
—M.E. says at least 4 stab wounds but won’t confirm
Clarence closes his leather notebook—pen still inside—and wraps the worn cord around it. He can keep track from inside his house, or he can keep track from outside his house. Given that the police will knock on his door soon enough, he may as well glean more information directly from the horses’ mouths.
He grabs the long-handled umbrella he pretends is for rain and not because he’s too stubborn to get a cane, then steps into the bright sun and calamity of the crime scene his neighbor’s yard has become.
