Who's Left After True Crime - Our College Pick

Readers and writers love a good true-crime story. There’s plenty of intrigue and suspense and enough intimate details to give the audience a good shiver. Stories about crime victims, however, are more difficult to report and write. Readers don’t want to pity the victim of a crime as much as cheer her on. The reporter can’t ignore the details of the crime, but can’t weigh a story down with them, either. The journalist must get close to the subject to tell a good, true story while also maintaining professional boundaries and trying to be a human being first and reporter second. It’s a most uncomfortable assignment. During eight months of reporting about the life of a student whose father murdered her mother, Kathryn Varn did a lot of things right. The result is a compelling read about a young woman moving forward and carrying her burden along the way.