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When
we first meet Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. As she looks
down from this strange new place, she tells us, in the fresh and
spirited voice of a fourteen-year-old girl, a tale that is both
haunting and full of hope.
In the weeks following her death, Susie watches life on Earth
continuing without her-her school friends trading rumors about her
disappearance, her family holding out hope that she'll be found, her
killer trying to cover his tracks. As months pass without leads, Susie
sees her parents' marriage being contorted by loss, her sister
hardening herself in an effort to stay strong, and her little brother
trying to grasp the meaning of the word gone.
And she explores the place called heaven. It looks a lot like her
school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. There are
counselors to help newcomers adjust and friends to room with.
Everything she ever wanted appears as soon as she thinks of it-except
the thing she most wants: to be back with the people she loved on
Earth.
With compassion, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie sees
her loved ones pass through grief and begin to mend. Her father
embarks on a risky quest to ensnare her killer. Her sister undertakes
a feat of remarkable daring. And the boy Susie cared for moves on,
only to find himself at the center of a miraculous event.
The Lovely Bones is luminous and astonishing, a novel that builds
out of grief the most hopeful of stories. In the hands of a brilliant
new writer, this story of the worst thing a family can face is
transformed into a suspenseful and even funny novel about love,
memory, joy, heaven, and healing.
Recorded Books presents an unabridged recording of The Lovely
Bones, by Alice Sebold, narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan, including an
interview with the author and now The Lovely Bones.
Inside the snow globe on my father's desk, there was a penguin
wearing a red-and-white-stripe scarf. When I was little my father
would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn
it over, -letting all the snow collect on the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently
around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I
worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, 'Don't worry,
Susie. He has a nice life. He's trapped in a perfect world.'
Chapter One
My name was Salmon, like the fish, first name Susie. I was 14 when
I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
In newspaper photos of missing girls from the 70s most looked like me: white girls with
mousy brown hair. This was before kids of all races and genders
started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail. It was still
back when people believed things like that didn't happen.
In my junior high yearbook, I had a quote from a Spanish poet my
sister had turned me on to, Juan Ramon Jimenez. It went like this,
"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." I chose it both because it expressed my contempt for my
structured surroundings a la the classroom and because, not being some
dopey quote from a rock group, I thought it marked me as
literary. I
was a member of the Chess Club and Chem Club and burned everything I
tried to make in Mrs. Delminico's home ec class ...
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