My Sunshine Away

'I should tell you now that I was one of the suspects. Hear me out. Let me explain . . . ' One hot evening in the summer of 1989, fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson cycles home through the wide, empty streets of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her hometown is a place of cookouts on sweltering afternoons, iced teas and crepe myrtle trees heavy with red and purple blossoms. Lindy is just yards from her parents' house when she is knocked to the sidewalk and raped. No one saw anything and the police draw a blank. The traumatized community does its best to rebuild and move on. But one fourteen-year-old boy is sure there are answers still awaiting to be found - out there on the swept and empty porches, by the lawns steaming in the early morning sun, under the newly broken street lamp. Secretly in love with Lindy and fascinated by her ordeal, he is drawn onward in a search for truths that may be better left buried. M.O. Walsh spins a haunting tale of Southern suburbia, where innocence is fleeting, deceptive and all too easily corrupted. 'A beautiful, remarkable book . . . I can't praise it enough.' Anne Rice, bestselling author of Prince Lestat