RABBIT HEART
A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Story
For readers of My Dark Places and The Fact of a Body, a beautiful, brutal memoir documenting one woman’s search for identity alongside her family’s decades-long quest to identify the two men who abducted—and murdered—her mother.
Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life.
For readers of My Dark Places and The Fact of a Body, a beautiful, brutal memoir documenting one woman’s search for identity alongside her family’s decades-long quest to identify the two men who abducted—and murdered—her mother.
Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life.
In her mother’s absence, Ervin tries to reconstruct a woman she can never fully grasp–from her own memory, from letters she uncovers, and from the stories of other family members. As more information about her mother’s death comes to light, Ervin’s drive to know her mother only intensifies, winding into her own fraught adolescence. She reckons with contradictions of what a woman is allowed to be–a self beyond the roles of wife, mother, daughter, victim–what a “true” victim is supposed to look like, and, finally, how complicated and elusive justice can be.
Told fearlessly and poetically, Rabbit Heart weaves together themes of power, gender, and justice into a manifesto of grief and reclamation: our stories do not need to be simple to be true, and there is power in the telling.
- Counterpoint
- Hardcover
- March 2024
- 304 Pages
- 9781640096370
Buy the Book
$27.00
About Kristine S. Ervin
Kristine S. Ervin grew up in a small suburb of Oklahoma City and now teaches creative writing at West Chester University, outside Philadelphia. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and a PhD in creative writing and literature, with a focus in nonfiction, from the University of Houston.
Praise
The New York Times, A New Book to Read This March
Named a Most Anticipated Book by The Washington Post, Elle, PureWow, Bookshop, and Kirkus Reviews
“This graceful resulting memoir wrestles with failures of justice; the nuances of gendered violence; and the difficulty of making do when we are not whole.” —Lauren Puckett-Pope, Elle
“It’s part true crime, examining the original corrupt trial as well as DNA evidence that emerged decades later, and part memoir—in poetic, heartbreaking prose, Ervin pieces together an image of her mother and revisits her younger self with the empathy and understanding she needed so desperately at the time. To say it’s a difficult read would be putting it mildly, but it’s even more so empowering, revelatory, and abundant with love.” —Arianna Rebolini, Bustle
“The author’s investigations of the concept of victimhood are insightful and urgent . . . Ervin laces the poetic text with unforgettable moments of startling, shattering honesty, many of which feel impossible to witness. This is the genius of the author’s prose and what makes this book remarkable: Ervin’s unflinchingly brutal gaze, combined with her insistence on facing the worst parts of her past, make it equally impossible for us to look away.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[A] lyrical, genre-defying memoir . . . Her observations around gender are particularly sharp and at times heart-wrenching. No matter how hard the material, and it’s all either hard or bittersweet, Ervin approaches her story with unflinching vulnerability . . . This may be the best way true crime should be written, with nuance and unfettered compassion and with the words of the living victims or their families at the center.” —Booklist (starred review)