The Younger Girl: A Historical Thriller Based on a True Crime

by Georgia Jeffries

Overview

A DARK LABYRINTH OF FAMILY BETRAYAL

Based on a true crime, The Younger Girl, by trailblazing, award-winning writer Georgia Jeffries combines historical fiction and supernatural suspense to unravel a thrilling tale of family deception and long-denied redemption.

In 1933, Chicago tabloids trumpeted the death of twenty-year-old town belle Aldine Younger.

"HEIRESS SLAIN, MARRIED MAN HELD."

In the aftermath of Aldine Younger's tragic death, her grieving brother Owen suspects that their wealthy uncle orchestrated a sinister murder plot to cover up the theft of Aldine's inheritance. Fast forward to 1996, when an aging Owen, burdened by the weight of the past, is compelled to discover the truth before he dies. His daughter, Joanna, becomes the key to unraveling the family's twisted history.

Father and daughter journey back to Pontiac, Illinois, to claim Owen's rightful bequest. They find themselves caught in a labyrinth of lies born of family greed and treachery crossing three generations. Amidst violent storms and dramatic revelations, Owen's sanity teeters on the edge as he confuses Joanna with the sister he lost. Joanna, racing against time, unearths secrets that could shatter her world and discovers a psychic bridge linking past, present, and future. But at what cost? And who will survive the revelations?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781961302617
Publisher:	Mission Point Press
Publication date:	10/22/2024
Pages:	282
Sales rank:	723,133
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Georgia Jeffries is a writer of Emmy Award-winning drama and acclaimed noir fiction. Honored with multiple Writers Guild Awards, Golden Globes, and the Humanitas Prize, her work in film has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as "standing ovation television."Born in the Illinois heartland, she worked as a journalist for American Film before writing and producing the groundbreaking female-driven dramas Cagney & Lacey, China Beach, and Sisters. Her screenwriting career has been distinguished by extensive field research, from patrolling the mean streets of Rampart with the LAPD to crashing a Vegas bounty hunters' convention to reporting from a Walter Reed Army Hospital surgical bay. Each investigation was the basis for one of her many docudramas and series pilots for CBS, ABC, NBC, HBO, and Showtime. Her short stories have appeared in national suspense anthologies, including Mystery Writers of America's Odd Partners and Sisters in Crime's The Last Resort. She has also written biography and historical profiles for HuffPost, Los Angeles Review of Books, and University of California Press. A cum laude UCLA graduate, Jeffries is a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she created the first BFA Television Thesis program at an American university.

Editorial Reviews

2024-10-04
In Jeffries’ thriller, a woman is inspired by her ill father’s cryptic comments to investigate the death of her aunt.

In 1996, accountant Joanna Giordano devotedly tends to her aging, cranky father, Owen, who has Parkinson’s disease and struggles under a “bitter weight of resentment and regret” that he’s unable to explain to others. After Owen’s half brother, Horatio Billingham, dies, he must travel with Joanna from Cathedral, California, to his hometown of Pontiac, Illinois, for the reading of the will. Horatio was estranged from his son, Tazewell, so Owen becomes the sole heir of his property. While in Pontiac,Owen tells Joanna that his beloved, older half sister, Aldine Younger, was murdered at the age of 20 by a man named Asher Bentley, and that Owen’s mother believed that Bentley was hired by his uncle, Frederick Heinemann, who wanted Aldine’s considerable inheritance. Shortly after revealing what appears to be a shocking family secret, Owen has an episode that causes him to fade into a haze of unintelligibility and is hospitalized. This chilling tale was inspired by the true story of the author’s own aunt, also named Aldine Younger and is hauntingly conveyed by author Jeffries. Throughout the narrative, Joanna desperately tries to unravel the mystery of her relative’s death. She hopes to find justice, as well as a means to help her troubled father: “All Joanna knew was that a dead woman took her father captive and she had no idea how to bring him back to her side where he belonged.” Meanwhile, Tazewell tracks her progress and has nefarious designs on Owen’s new property. This is an unusual story that’s sometimes quite tangled and incredibly dark in tone, but it’s told with great poignancy by Jeffries, who writes that she aims to use the “liberating power of fiction” to revive a real-life tale. Her prose is informal in tone but agile, and she artfully crafts an atmosphere of dread. Overall, it’s a grim narrative, but an affecting and engaging one.

An often-gripping story of family dysfunction and murder.

Kirkus Reviews