The Singing Bone

Quiet, studious Alice Wood is forced to face her past when filmmaker Hans Loomis approaches her about including her story in a documentary about cult leader Jack Wyck in the 1970s. Although Alice has sought obscurity after the events of that summer, which led to Wyck's imprisonment, it soon becomes clear that Alice will be outed either by the filmmaker or a group of Wyckians, who still admire Wyck despite his conviction. In her debut, Hahn intertwines Alice's experiences with free love and drugs and her search for enlightenment as a teenager with her desire to remain anonymous as an adult. The chapters alternate between 1979 and 1999, but Alice's stream-of-consciousness narrative sometimes blurs the line between past and present. This book demonstrates convincingly how an intelligent, well-liked, and respected high school student can suddenly find herself involved with a man on the fringes of society. Although teens need to navigate between two narrators and two different time periods, those who appreciate psychological thrillers will keep reading for answers.