The author of an award-winning memoir chronicling her mother’s murder in the lakeside resort town of Bridgton, Maine, is joining the online discussion in the Finding Our Voices book club during Domestic Abuse Awareness Month.
Sarah Perry was 12 when 30-year-old Crystal was murdered in 1994 in Bridgton. “After the Eclipse” is a celebration of her mother as well as a chronicle of the 12 years it took for the murder to be solved.
The hour-long and free discussion is Monday Oct. 16 at 6 p.m. over Zoom. Sign-up is by visiting https://bookclubs.com/clubs/23834/join/0c701b/ or emailing Patrisha McLean, founder/president of the grassroots, survivor-powered nonprofit at [email protected]. Finding Our Voices is breaking the silence of domestic abuse across Maine.
McLean will host with Mary Lou Smith of Scarborough of the group’s online book club where the author often joins the discussion.
McLean said “After the Eclipse” is a perfect choice for October since a theme of the Finding Our Voices Maine fall library tour is the impact of domestic abuse on children. “This is a tale of multi-generational domestic abuse. And what I also found particularly interesting and chilling is Perry’s page and a half listing of men who could have murdered her mother, either abusive boyfriends or those with a creepy fixation on her.” The fall tour is bringing a survivor-led discussion and short films to public libraries in Millinocket, Northeast Harbor, Bar Harbor, Camden, Damariscotta, Kennebunk, and York.
According to The New York Times book review by Bliss Boyard, “After the Eclipse” “pulls the reader swiftly along on parallel tracks of mystery and elegy. [Perry]’s also a wonderful writer with an assured sense of when to zoom in to her body’s somatic response for a piercing immediacy and when to pull back to convey the measured perspective gained through the distance of time. Many moments of beauty and tenderness rise up through the darkness.” Laura Miller of Slate magazine called the book “Raw and perfect.”
The Finding Our Voices online book club, said McLean “is one more way that we are opening eyes, minds, hearts to the domestic abuse all around us. We like to choose books that aren’t obvious selections for the domestic abuse theme, for instance we did a number of books about cults because of how much domestic abuse is like being in a cult. Most of the time the author joins us for the discussion, even when they live in a different time zone as was the case with Kate Moore of the U.K. for The Woman They Could Not Silence.
McLean said she is thrilled that Perry is joining the discussion for the Finding Our Voice Domestic Abuse Awareness Month’s book selection. “I couldn’t put it down myself, and am getting rave reviews from everyone in our book club who is reading it.”
The Finding Our Voices tour of public libraries features a panel of survivors talking about emotional abuse, and the impact of this on children, as well as short films on the subject. Tour dates are Bar Harbor Oct. 4, Millinocket Oct. 11, York Oct. 17, Kennebunk Oct. 18, Damariscotta Nov. 7, and Camden Nov. 28. The Rockport Public Library is turning over a huge bank of windows for an outdoor Finding Our Voices exhibit for the month of October. These libraries as well as supporting ones in Somesville, Southwest Harbor, Bass Harbor, Kittery, and Wells are receiving a Finding Our Voices gift pack of seven domestic abuse-themed books. All the libraries are also distributing the Finding Our Voices bookmarks, sponsored by First National Bank, that feature the photo portraits of 45 Maine survivors including Gov. Janet T. Mills.
For more information about these Finding Our Voices events can be found at https://findingourvoices.net.
