When she was only 12, author Sarah Perry experienced a waking nightmare: one night, her mother was murdered in the home they shared in rural Maine, just steps away from her bedroom. In her debut, Perry weaves together her painful memories of that night with archival research and journalistic interviews to not only piece together the details of her mother’s death, but illuminate the woman she was before it. With clear, powerful prose, Perry paints a portrait of unconventional motherhood while questioning society’s handling of violence against women. Reminiscent of Maggie Nelson’s The Red Parts, After the Eclipse tells the very human story at the center of a needless crime.

Author Sarah Perry’s visceral memoir, After the Eclipse, is not, in any way, for the faint of heart.

Perry’s mother, Crystal was brutally murdered inside her own Maine home in the late hours of May 11, 1994, two days after a partial solar eclipse, with 12-year-old Perry in the next room. The author’s description of waking to an argument, and then within minutes, listening to her mother’s sudden screams of “No! No! No!” while she was a mere 15 feet away, personally shook me to the core. I had also grown up, like Perry, in a small town with a beautiful, young single mom. I couldn’t help the images coming at me in waves; that this could have happened to me. It could have happened to my mother.


Sarah Perry, author of After the Eclipse. Photo by R. K. Oliver
Perry retells how she tentatively whispered the word, “Mom?!” and received no response, but immediately understood that her mother could not respond to her call, lest she give away her daughter’s location to the intruder. More screams of “No!” and a kitchen drawer being pulled open present a horrific foreshadowing of what will happen, and I realize it reads as flawlessly as a scene in a novel, until I remember this isn’t fiction. This is real, all of it. And Sarah Perry lived it.

I point out to this scene not out of morbid glee to create sensationalism and shock, but because it’s this scene I can’t erase from my mind, even weeks after finishing the book. After all is quiet, and Perry can’t hear neither her mother’s screams or the unseen intruder any longer, she forces herself to try and call 911 after having to see the crumpled shape of her mother on the floor, pinching herself to prove that this isn’t the worst nightmare of her young life. When the call doesn’t go through, she is forced to run outside for help, knocking on the door of several houses and receiving no response, until finally arriving at the back door of an Italian restaurant whose proprietor peeked outside in answer to Perry’s urgent cries.

The murder of Crystal Perry is interwoven with her daughter’s memories of who her mother was, how she lived, and whom she loved. Sarah Perry through her narrative, introduces us not to the woman who was brutally murdered, but to the daughter, wife, girlfriend, woman, and mother who worked a grueling job of hand-sewing shoes in a factory to support her only child, who was exceedingly proud when she managed to buy her first house, a home for her and her daughter. Someone full of life, who loved to dance and sunbathe “behind oversize white plastic sunglasses.” She had beautiful red hair. She was “full of energy and passion.”

Perry’s journey in trying to understand her mother’s life alongside tapping into the childhood memories about her is one of not always pleasant discoveries. We, and I say this from experience, sometimes forget that our parents aren’t just parents. They have dreams, desires, ambitions. And yes, secrets too. As Sarah Perry navigates hundreds of police files and interviews her own family members, Crystal Perry appears in a more human light, with all her qualities but also flaws that were deeply rooted in her own childhood. She fell in love with the wrong men because she was fearful of not having a man by her side, a fable that had been systematically reinforced on her by her mother. At the time of her death, Crystal was engaged to a man she wasn’t sure she wanted to marry. She broke off the engagement several times but then it was on again, a cycle that would be repeated over and over.


Sarah Perry with her mother, Crystal Perry.
Reading Perry recounting her life after her mother’s murder is also heartbreaking. She was shuffled from one family member to the other, the depth of her tragedy sympathized with but not truly understood. She was plagued for a long time with nightmares and terrible fears of being stalked and ultimately found by her mother’s killer, whom the police didn’t find until twelve years later. The murder made her frightened of men and what they could do to her if she rejected their advances. As Perry herself admits:



“It is often simply easier to give men what they want. I once said yes to a man because I was positive that if I said no, he would rape me. He was aggressive and pushy in a way I’d never encountered, flattening me painfully against a cold window when I tried to pull away. In that moment, I saw that if I continued to resist, he might not listen to me and then there’d be no going back. I didn’t want to take a chance. I didn’t want to be a victim, so I made the best of it.”

Considering the plethora of sexual harassment stories that have made the front pages of many news outlets these past few months, it can’t be a surprise that Perry felt this way when put in a situation that she felt was out of her control. I also can’t help but think that maybe her mother’s screams of “No!” played over and over in her mind, reminding her of what could happen to her if she fought back against something she didn’t want.

Difficult as it was, Perry went through the many existing police files about her mother’s case. She learned that her mother had not only been stabbed multiple times, but she had also been brutally violated. That the killer had stood over her body and left droplets of his own blood. And that most likely, her mother had known him.

The moment that Perry reveals the identity of her mother’s killer is a turning point in the book instead of the climax of this story, because it leads to other revelations made by friends and family members about him. Many things are, however, ultimately left in the dark. Forgotten memories, a name that might have been uttered but with no great percentage of certainty. Perry’s ultimate decision was not to interview her mother’s killer in prison and ask him why he did it. “I decided that hearing whatever he might tell me wasn’t worth the psychological danger of being near him,” Perry writes in her author’s notes. “To be in conversation with someone, you must cooperate with them, however briefly, and I have no wish to cooperate with him.” In the end, Sarah Perry’s book is her brave personal stand about the tragedy of losing her mother. Her final quote in the notes makes that clear: “This book isn’t about him. It’s about Mom.”

This is a beautifully written memoir about a mother and a daughter and a horrible crime. The author's mother was brutally murdered in their home while she was in her bedroom. The book alternates between a memoir and a book about the crime and the aftermath. The author has chosen to show how this one act of violence affects everyone involved and the small town they lived in. While this story is an intensely personal one the author also show how family violence, Violence against women, poverty, and lack of social care can have far reaching consequences. She also shows how bad police work delayed answers and how good police work solved it. This book will break your heart but it is a very good read. Once started it will be hard to stop reading and the book will stay with long after you finished. I highly recommend this book.

The author of this true crime memoir does an exceptional job of balancing the emotional with the factual as she relates her experience and the aftermath of the murder of her mother, which occurred when Sarah Perry was just twelve years old. Due to the grisly crime and her detailed research, balanced with her memories and emotions, Perry writes a book that will appeal to many true crime readers and to memoir readers as well.

This.

Book.

This book completely sucker punched me in the feels and I'm still a wreck thinking about this book.

I requested it because it sounded interesting and when I was younger, like grade school young, I would read true crime books like they were candy.

I have no idea why my younger self was into that sort of thing and it kind of disturbs me now. And this book is why.

The author's mother was murdered when the author was a girl of 12 years old. She was there and HEARD it happen and saw the immediate aftermath. It was brutal and gruesome. No one was really able to be there for her to deal with it all. Her family were either absent or absolutely horrible to her. The police and some of her family members were CONVINCED she knew who killed her mother and wasn't saying who it was to protect him. They pestered her about it, over and over again, until finally they did regression therapy and it showed she didn't know. The poor girl! She lost her beloved mother and SHE is treated as an accomplice, if not the actual murderer! Also, she had to bang on the door of FOUR houses before someone would open the door to her and let her use their phone after the murder happened.

This was a SMALL town, she was KNOWN to these people. She was screaming, crying for help and COVERED in blood, and NO ONE was willing to help her?!? I seriously hate people sometimes.

So anyway, long story short, what has made me change my stance on true crime and murder mystery books and shows, is this. The author has to live every day with the idea of murder being glorified almost in our modern media. Those shows and books don't really show what the survivors have to go through, day in, day out. There are real people behind the headlines and the fiction that's ripped from the headlines.

Having that brought to my attention has changed the way I feel about murder mystery books now. Granted, they have been falling out of my favor recently, because I really don't like reading about people being brutalized and tortured before being killed, but this is the final nail in the coffin I think.

If you enjoy murder mystery shows and books, do NOT read this book. It might very well ruin them for you. At the very least, it will make you think.

The book isn't all about the murder and the aftermath, the chapters alternate with a biography about the mother and their time together. She was a single mother and they were a very close mother-daughter pair. It is even more heartbreaking when you see the sacrifices the mother made for both of them. They truly loved one another. So sad.

Also, this book takes on the whole "men take what they want from women and society allows them to think that is their right" which has been coming up more and more recently. It can be a bit in the reader's face at times, but it is a very important topic. Men and women need to call BS on the whole "rape culture" that the world has going on. Women have come a long way, but boy, do we still have a long way to go!

Topical, important, if depressing, read. 5 stars. Written well, with heart. Highly recommended.

My thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

This is such a well-written and powerful read. Sarah Perry was only 12 years old when her mother was murdered as she lay sleeping in the next room. The murder was particularly brutal and vicious and Sarah heard it as it was happening. It would take 12 years to find the murderer.

Sarah’s story is one of “before” and “after” the murder. It is part memoir, part true crime/courtroom drama. But mostly it's the story of the close relationship she and her mother enjoyed, and the devastating years after the murder. Sarah was shunted off to live with various relatives and suffering the emotional effects of losing her mother in such a violent way.

The strength of the book is the humanity she brings to her mother. Her mother is not simply a statistic, she was a living, breathing, human being who had hopes and dreams and plans for the future. Sarah brings her to life on the page so the reader feels like she knew Crystal, and what the immensity of the loss means to her daughter. She tells us about the Crystal she knew as a young girl, and the more complete picture she has of her now. Sarah is brutally honest as she tells us the flattering and the not-so-flattering stories of her mother.

This is a picture of grief, in all it’s rawness and pain, even now, many years later. The emotional and psychological toll on Sarah is heartbreaking. It’s the story of a small town, the attitudes and prejudices and the characters who inhabit it. Sarah’s story should have us all thinking about how we view violence against women, and about the men who inflict such violence against women.

I admire Sarah’s honesty and courage in telling her story and I can't help but think how so very proud her mother would be of her.

* many thanks to the author, Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review

After the Eclipse is an intense and emotional memoir of a life loss and a life loved. Sarah Perry’s book, deeply and extensively researched, engages the reader from the beginning. Single mother Crystal Perry’s life tragically came to an end when she was only 30 years old and her only child, Sarah, was twelve. Crystal was brutally murdered while her terrified daughter listened to the sounds and screams of her mother. Reading this part of the memoir was heart wrenching. However, the author effectively allowed the reader to bear witness to these and other emotions as they were part of her life before and after the loss of her mother.
Having read a variety of memoirs, I felt this book stood apart, not only by its unique format, but by the author’s detailed, descriptive portrayal of the people involved in her mother’s life. This was very insightful in explaining Crystal Perry’s actions, behavior, and personality. The author, very courageously, travelled back to a dark period in her life to share with the world a hard working, dedicated, beautiful and loving mother who will now be remembered, not just as a murder victim, but as a real person who loved and was loved by many family and friends, especially her daughter. This memoir is a testament to that love...and a life remembered.

After the Eclipse is one of the most harrowing and heart-breaking books I've read this year, and I've read over 60 books so far. The true crime story of the murder of a mother and the repercussions the event has over the lifetime of her daughter. Terse, thrilling and very heartfelt and sad. Should be listed as one of the must-reads of the year on everyone's list.

This is a beautifully written book about loss and coming of age by Sarah Perry. It's relatable with the recent eclipse we had too in a way, as the tragedy in her life happened just 2 days after she experienced an eclipse. Almost like it was a bad omen, her mother Crystal was killed in a horrific murder in their home, just one room away from her daughter who was awakened and heard it happening and bravely managed to escape. Sarah shares what the years were like growing up without either parent, being bounced between her mom's family members and even some well-meaning friends briefly, as she struggled to keep a grip on her fear, sanity, and loneliness while she finished growing up. A very good read for most true crime lovers. An ARC was provided by NetGalley and the publisher for an unbiased review.

The title of this novel caught my attention after having just experienced the solar eclipse of 2017, and after reading the synopsis, I requested to read it. Sarah Perry does a remarkable job recounting the harrowing tale of her mother's murder and the long wait to find her killer. It is obvious this book has been thoroughly researched and painstakingly recounted, and while Sarah's love for her mother clearly comes through, she does not let it alter the facts of the case. This is an important book that reminds the reader that social class, race, or gender should never affect how a crime is portrayed or perceived, and how each violent crime we read or hear about as we quickly swipe or turn the channel, has impacted and changed someone's life forever.

After the Eclipse is an absorbing tale of a young mother's savage murder and the impact it had upon her daughter's life. Author Sarah Perry details her life before and after her mother's heinous murder. She also reconstructed her mother's life through research, interviews, and her own recollections. Justice finally came years after her mother's death. It's a gripping story.

At the age of 12, Sarah woke up in the night to hear her mother screaming for her life in the next room, as she was brutally murdered. "After The Eclipse" is her deeply affecting memoir about her mother, her murder and her twelve year wait for the perpetrator's capture, an almost too personal take on a horrific true crime.
It's a fascinating, albeit very hard, read that I found almost too voyeuristic, as Sarah shares experiences that nobody, let alone a 12 year old child, should have to go through. The most interesting aspect for me, was seeing the adult Sarah looking back at her history with an exceptional maturity. When you consider everything she went through, she would be justified in being a very angry, bitter, f'ed up adult, but far from it. This is a beautifully written, fascinating memoir, and a moving tribute to her mother.

Sarah woke in the middle of the night to her mother's screams. Paralyzed with fear, she listened as her mother was murdered. Shuffled from relative to relative, Sarah struggled to build a meaningful life. Years later, advances in forensics caught her mother's killer and he stood trial.

This was an engaging and fascinating read. It was hard to put down. Sarah was very relatable. She struggled to learn about her mother and make sense of the senseless. Overall, well worth reading.

Beautifully candid and courageous this was a very emotional read. At 12 years old Sarah is plunged into a living nightmare when her mother is murdered and it is 12 long years before the killer is finally caught. My heart hurt for this poor child to lose her mother and to have a family who couldn't look past their own pain enough to care for her the way they should have in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy. Sarah Perry has written a wonderful tribute to her mother's life.