The dead girl

by Melanie Thernstrom

Roberta Lee, a lovely Berkeley student of unusual promise, went running one November Sunday in 1984 with her lover Bradley Page. Brad came back alone.... Five weeks later, her battered body was found on a bed of branches in a shallow grave. Within hours, Page had confessed to the murder of Roberta Lee - then recanted. The story of the dead girl had begun.... In this haunting, multi-layered work of striking originality, we experience the horrifying crime at its center, the agonizing search for the body, the trial and its wrenching explosive climax, the sinister and deceptively bland defendant. The Dead Girl is a superb collage of remembrance, loss and redemption.