The officer's daughter A memoir of family and forgiveness

Screenwriter Johnson recalls the murder of her teenage cousin Karen Marsh in 1981. The author grew up in Queens, NY, in a law enforcement family; her father was a parole officer and her uncle a homicide detective. Johnson was enamored with Karen, admiring her ease and ability to navigate spaces with confidence, whether in her all-white Catholic high school or a sweet sixteen party in the Bronx with mostly Black friends. Karen's senseless death in a Burger King robbery gone awry traumatizes the family. Johnson's isolation from both her parents and her classmates at her mostly white school following the death of her cousin is felt keenly. Her father, mercurial and occasionally violent, wrestles with the tension between understanding how institutional racism and intergenerational poverty impact the behavior of his parolees, and frustration when they make poor choices. Johnson understands this tension and when Karen's killer is up for parole in 2014 and her brother Warren asks her to write a letter to the parole board urging them to deny parole, she must grapple with whether or not she really believes in rehabilitation or forgiveness. VERDICT A powerful meditation on the long aftermath of violent crime that will engage a variety of readers.--Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

Powerful reflections on crime, murder, punishment, and redemption. Johnson, a writer and producer for HBO's Bosch, among many other crime shows, opens on a harrowing note: "When I was sixteen, my sixteen-year-old cousin, Karen, had her face blown off at point-blank range by a sawed-off shotgun in a robbery gone awry at a local Burger King in the Bronx." That terrible crime occurred nearly 40 years ago, and though it never faded from memory, it was made immediate by a letter from the victim's older brother asking that Johnson make a plea to the parole board to ask that the killer not be released from prison: The author knew a thing or two about imprisonment and the parole process: Her late father had been a parole officer, which he called "the worst job in the world," while the victim's father was a police officer at the time of the murder. The three young men who were implicated in the crime, all imprisoned--and lucky for them, Johnson suggests, lest her father and uncle have tracked them down and killed them outright--had arrived at various stages of repentance. One had pledged to make his life virtuous to atone for the act while the actual shooter presented a more problematic case. "In ten parole hearings over the course of fourteen years," writes Johnson, "he never once said the words 'I'm sorry.' He forgave himself, but he had never asked to be forgiven. I didn't forgive him. I couldn't." The outcome of this poignant and provocative story arrives after numerous compelling twists and turns and many revelations, including the fact that the scenario of her cousin's killing was very different in reality from the one she had remembered for all these years. Still, the central truth remains: A young woman who would now be in her mid-50s has long been dead, her killers live, and Johnson is left to ponder whether--and how--justice has been served. A remarkable exploration of forgiveness by a veteran storyteller. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.