Carys Cragg takes us on her journey to get to know her father's killer and to understand the man and the moment that changed her life forever. What a brave, informative and deeply moving book this is. This is a powerful and emotional memoir about how reconciling with the past doesn't necessarily provide comfort, but it can reveal the truth.Īn extremely powerful story for the public to have access to, and one that smashes society's assumptions about both victim and perpetrator. With gripping suspense and raw honesty, Dead Reckoning follows one woman's determination to confront the man who murdered her father, revealing her need for understanding and the murderer's reluctance to tell-an uneasy negotiation between two people from different worlds both undone by tragedy. She mines his letters for clues about the past before agreeing to meet him in person, when she learns startling new information about the crime. She learns of his horrific childhood, and the reasons he lied about the murder in turn, he learns about the man he killed. Twenty years later, and despite the reservations of her family and friends, she decides to contact his murderer in prison, and the two correspond for a period of two years. When Carys Cragg was eleven, her father, a respected doctor, was brutally murdered in his own home by an intruder.

Finalist, Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fictionįinalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)

Dead Reckoning by Carys Cragg