Brooklyn Bones

Unburying history can have unintended consequences.

In Brooklyn Bones, a crime of the past comes much too close to home when Erica Donato's teenage daughter Chris finds a skeleton behind a wall in their crumbling Park Slope home. Erica—a young widow, overage history PhD candidate, and product of blue-collar Brooklyn—is drawn into the mystery when she learns that the skeleton is of an unknown teenage girl and that it was hidden there within living memory. Erica and Chris are both touched and disturbed by the mysterious tragedy in their own home.

With her daughter's dangerous curiosity and her own work at a local history museum, Erica follows leads about the mysterious skeleton right back to her own neighborhood in its edgy, pregentrification days, the period when the age of Aquarius was turning dark. Now she finds that a cranky retired reporter wants to share old files, the charming widow of a slumlord has some surprises for her, and the crazy old lady who hangs around her street keeps trying to tell her something. Finally, there are some people—including ones she is close to—who know the whole story and will stop at nothing to make sure it stays buried forever.