MYSTERY

Dodging and Burning

Pegasus Crime. Mar. 2018. 384p. ISBN 9781681776590. $25.95; ebk. ISBN 9781681777153. M
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OrangeReviewStarFifty-five years after the events that turned their lives upside down, Bunny Prescott writes to her childhood friend Ceola Bliss, asking if she also received a photograph of a murdered woman. In alternating chapters, the two women recount what happened in the summer of 1945 in a small Virginia town. Mourning the loss of her brother who had gone down with his ship in the Pacific, 12-year-old Ceola spends time with his best friend, Jay Greenwood, who shows Ceola a photo of a woman he found dead in the woods. Bunny tags along with them, and the trio discover the body has disappeared. While Ceola wants to play detective, the slightly older Bunny suspects there's something more happening. Family secrets, fears, and hatreds are uncovered, and events escalate until they explode in violence.
VERDICT Copenhaver, who writes a crime fiction column for the Lambda Literary website, makes a powerful debut with this unconventional novel that mixes a coming- of-age tale with a puzzling mystery and a haunting portrait of the experiences of the LGBTQ community in the 1940s. Admirers of William Kent Krueger's Edgar Award-winning stand-alone, Ordinary Grace, may appreciate this candid story.
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