Jane Bernstein was seventeen in the summer of 1966 when her adored older sister, Laura, was stabbed to death by a stranger, for no apparent reason. More than two decades later, Bernstein found her thoughts and fantasies returning insistently to the sister she'd never allowed herself to mourn. Gradually she immersed herself in the long-buried tragedy, obsessively reviewing articles and transcripts, and, like a detective herself, interviewing detectives, attorneys, and others who'd been close to her sister or involved in the case. What was she trying to solve?
Weaving present into past with deceptive ease, Bernstein unearths uncomfortable truths about both. We come to see that the actual object of her search is her own identity, sucked under in a wake of denial after Laura's murder. Reclaiming who she was-and what Laura was to her-meant questioning every aspect of her carefully constructed adult sense of self: as a writer, a daughter, a mother, and the wife of a charismatic but unpredictable man. Passionate and disquieting, Bereft is a testament to the silent depredations of unacknowledged loss, and a tribute to our power to reclaim ourselves.
