Book Review: The Slow Moon, by Elizabeth Cox

The writing in this book is just beautiful, though the reality for the characters is anything but. It's set in a small, seemingly serene Tennessee town, where 14-year-old Sophie and her mother had recently moved from Montana to escape the haunting memories of her father, who had died two years earlier in a forest fire. It's the kind of town where nothing bad is supposed to happen.

Sophie wasn't too sure about the move, but things seem to be going well for her. She has a great new boyfriend, Crow and she seems to be adjusting to her new school. But then one night she and Crow slip away from a party, off into the woods to be alone, and Sophie is brutally attacked. Crow is arrested for the crime. He claims he is innocent, but Sophie is unable or unwilling to talk about what happened. There is evidence of multiple attackers, and quite a few possibilities here, as all the guys at school wanted to date Sophie, and at least one of those was terribly jealous and possibly wanting revenge when she started dating Crow.

One thing about this book which made it totally different from most of the books I read is the way it just mentions rather large events--such as Crow's trial and the outcome--in a rather offhand manner, rather than ratcheting up the suspense. It seems to be above such plot tricks as that.

As far as the rapists' identities are concerned, one person I suspected right off. I was right about him, but hadn't had a clue as to who else might be involved, and at least one of those was one whom I never would have suspected. Of course, it's easy to hate someone who does something like that, but since these people's backgrounds were discussed to some extent beforehand, the reader gets to know them as people, what they were like before they did something so hideous. They didn't necessarily seem to be the sort of boys who would do something like that, even the one I suspected. I guess maybe that's the point. I didn't feel sorry for them, since they deserved punishment, but you do see that there's more to them as people than that one act, evil as it was.

Also, the reader gets the sense that Sophie will heal and move on, but for the boys, it wouldn't be so easy. I guess that makes sense, and certainly it's only fair. Sophie was a strong person who had good support in her healing. She was able to see she didn't have to be a victim forever. But for a person who committed such a crime, assuming he had a conscience at all (which I think these boys did, maybe not as strong of a conscience as they should have had, but they weren't sociopaths), it would be pretty hard to come to terms with having done something so evil.

The Slow Moon was originally published in hardcover in 2006. The Random House Trade paperback edition was published in 2007.