Crime and Compassion: Poets & Writers on T Kira Madden

Three very different women with one shared connection piece together an unnerving mystery in Whidbey, a sweeping story of justice, power and healing. Read on for an exclusive excerpt from Poets & Writers‘ March/April cover story on T Kira Madden’s new novel. Grab the latest issue of Poets & Writers at your nearest B&N Newsstand today.

From the magazine:

“T Kira Māhealani Madden’s debut novel begins for the reader as it did for the author, with a stranger’s proposition of murder.

In Whidbey, published by Mariner Books in March, Birdie Chang is on her way to Whidbey Island off the coast of Washington state to hide from the world in general, and, specifically, from a man named Calvin Boyer. Years ago, when Birdie was twelve and living in Florida, Calvin sexually assaulted her. Now, at twenty-eight, she is plagued by his incessant missives over e-mail—attempts to reestablish connection­—and haunted by how a bestselling memoir by another of Calvin’s victims has spotlit the story in the media. When the handsome, inquisitive Rich Amani engages Birdie in conversation, she impulsively tells him about Calvin, a man she says she’d kill if she could. Rich offers to do it for her, no strings attached, to avenge her simply as a kindness. Not long after, Calvin is murdered.

If this setup sounds familiar, that’s because Whidbey pays homage to the opening of Patricia Highsmith’s 1950 novel, Strangers on a Train, brought to the screen a year later by Alfred Hitchcock. Madden was thinking of Highsmith when she penned it, though its inspiration came from personal experience. “This scene, which is the kernel of the story, is true,” she tells me over a cup of steaming mint tea.”