The Little Friend

In a small Mississippi town, Harriet Cleve Dusfrenes grows up haunted by the murder of her brother, who was found hanging from a tree in their yard when she was just a baby. Robin's killer was never identified, and the family has never recovered from the tragedy. Harriet's father mostly absent, her mother incapacitated by grief, and her teenage sister unable to recall what she saw that terrible day. Harriet lives largely in the world of her imagination, alone even in company, obsessed by Robin who is a link to the happier past she knows from stories and photographs. And then one summer, the year she turns twelve, Harriet decides to find his murderer and exact his revenge. Even more transfixing than its predecessor, The Little Friend is a dark novel of lost childhood, breathtaking in its ambition and power, rich in moral paradox and profound insights into human frailty.