When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine, just a few feet from Sarah's bedroom.
The killer escaped unseen; it would take the police twelve years to find him, time in which Sarah grew into adulthood, struggling with abandonment, police interrogations, and the effort of rebuilding her life when so much had been lost. Through it all she would dream of the eventual trial, a conviction—all her questions finally answered. But after the trial, Sarah's questions only grew. She wanted to understand her mother's life, not just her final hours, and so she began a personal investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, taking her deep into the abiding darkness of a small American town.
Told in searing prose, After the Eclipse is a luminous memoir of uncomfortable truth and terrible beauty, an exquisite memorial for a mother stolen from her daughter, and a blazingly successful attempt to cast light on her life once more.
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"[Perry] wonderfully evokes her mother even as she struggles to unravel the mystery of her death…Perry’s memoir is a testament to one child’s ability to survive the unspeakable, one woman’s ability to recapture what was lost, and a fascinating small-town mystery with breathtaking revelations at the end.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Emily Woo Zeller expertly narrates Sarah Perry’s memoir… Zeller builds real people with credible emotions…What could be better than a listening experience combining masterful writing, a riveting story, and a superb narration? Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile“Stunning.”
— Entertainment Weekly"[Perry] is a wonderful writer…Beauty and tenderness rise up through the darkness…[She] succeeds in restoring her mother’s humanity, and her own.”
— New York Times Book Review“Heartbreaking yet hopeful.”
— Marie ClaireBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Sarah Perry holds an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University, where she served as publisher of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art and was a member of the journal’s nonfiction editorial board. She is the recipient of a Writers’ Fellowship from the Edward F. Albee Foundation and a Javits Fellowship from the US Department of Education and has attended residencies at Norton Island in Maine and PLAYA in Oregon. Her prose has appeared in Blood & Thunder magazine and Bluestockings Literary Journal.
Emily Woo Zeller is an artist, actor, dancer, choreographer, and voice artist who has won Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration in 2018. She began her voice-over career by voicing animation in Asia. AudioFile magazine named her one of the Best Voices of 2013 for her work in Gulp. Other awards include the 2009 Tristen Award for Best Actress as Sally Bowles in Cabaret and the 2006 Roselyn E. Schneider Prize for Creative Achievement.