The Dead Parent Club: A Murder and a Memoir
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Date
2024-01-07
Department
Nonfiction MFA
Program
MFA in Creative Nonfiction
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This work is restricted for 10 years from the date listed above. No access will be permitted until the embargo has expired. Once the embargo expires the work is available only on Goucher College's campus.
Abstract
In 1989, Terry Schmansky was violently murdered in her Baltimore apartment. When the case went cold her three young daughters were sent back to live with the main suspect in the case, their father.
Over 25 years later, Terry's middle daughter Shannon, is giving birth to her own daughter, when she sees her mother's ghost walking down the hospital hallway. This event ignites an unshakable obsession with solving her mother's murder. Convinced of their father's guilt, the three sisters work tirelessly to build the case against him and jumpstart the investigation: tumultuous meetings with detectives, chilling interviews, heartbreaking evidence testing, and renegade strategies that reveal family secrets and a second suspect.
In an uncompromising true-crime memoir, Shannon revisits her complicated childhood, and the judicial deficiencies as they relate to domestic violence and class. During her hunt for a murderer, Shannon learns the delicate balance of living in the past and present, while coming into her own and finding closure when traditional justice isn't an option.