A sober, intimate, deeply moving, and universally relatable novel of the daily lives of survivors and their their complex feelings.

The narrator of this novel is nineteen when she is raped in the woods. The usual executive and judicial machinery swings ponderously into action, but the case is dismissed due to lack of convincing evidence. As a result of unrelated investigations, a suspect is identified twelve years later. There will be a trial. Meanwhile, the narrator has moved on with her life. Now the mother of a little girl, she is expecting a second child. But new developments in the case yank her brutally back into a past she'd believed buried. She realizes both that suffering is ever-present, ready to pounce, and that the possibility of overcoming the past and being at peace with herself is finally within reach.