Book Review: I Did It For You by Amy Engel

The Dunning family has never recovered from the murder of eldest daughter Eliza. She and her boyfriend Travis Pratt were shot to death while making out in his car. The killer was swiftly apprehended, but the surviving members of Eliza’s family have drifted, unable to cope with their grief. Dad has disappeared into alcoholism, while Mom obsessively cleans their Ludlow, Kansas home. Younger daughter Greer worked herself up into a frenzy after the arrest of Roy Mathews, refusing to believe that the sullen, not-too-bright teenager had just up and killed two people for no apparent reason one day. Her insistence that someone else had to have masterminded the crime earned her only a trip to a therapist to discuss her emotions. Realizing that no one was listening to her, she left her small town as soon as she could, finally settling in Chicago to exist more than to live.

So when her father drunkenly calls one day telling her that Roy has done it again, Greer is less shocked than angry. Despite what her father claims, Roy is in prison, facing the death penalty. He could hardly have been responsible for the eerily similar shooting death of two other teenagers, over a decade after he shot Eliza and Travis. But Greer has always suspected that someone else was involved, and is enraged to hear that the Ludlow cops are calling these latest killings the work not only of a copycat but of an opportunistic drifter passing through town.

Going home is painful, but Greer knows that she has to do something to prevent more murders. Trouble is, she doesn’t really know who or what she’s looking for. Almost against her better judgment, she falls in with an unlikely ally. Their investigations quickly raise as many eyebrows as they do questions. Her parents are especially aghast at the reopening of old wounds:

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” I said, working to lower my voice.

 

“Then what are you trying to do?” My mother worried her hands together, her raw knuckles scraping.

 

“I don’t know,” I admitted. And that was the awful truth of it. I’d thought when I’d come back to Ludlow that I’d known what I was looking for, that my purpose was laid out clear as an X on a map. But as the days went by, I felt more adrift than ever, running in circles, looking for clues that weren’t there, finding answers that only led to more questions. Distrusting the people I loved, looking at familiar faces and seeing strangers instead. Putting my trust in someone I barely knew. I was lost and had no idea how to be found.

But Greer refuses to give up. She’s tired of living in limbo, of hearing her sister’s voice in her head asking for answers. It’s someone else’s investigations that lead to a breakthrough in the case, however, digging up an awful revelation that will jeopardize everything Greer has allowed herself to believe since Eliza’s murder. Will Greer be able to push through when her investigations begin to imperil both herself and the people she loves?

More than just a twisty murder mystery—with a revelation as to motive that surprised and moved even a jaded genre aficionado like myself—this is a meditation on grief and love and moving on that is just as heavy on empathy as it is on atmosphere. The Dunnings’ are so stuck in their unhappiness that it takes a catastrophic event to jolt them out of their holding patterns. Greer herself finds guidance in a place she doesn’t expect, when she interviews the mother of one of the teenagers whose deaths drew Greer home. Lorraine Johnson is clearly grieving but is also dealing with her emotions in an unmistakably healthy manner. When Greer asks her how she does it, Lorraine explains how she looks each day for three things to be grateful for, and how that grounds her in all the good still left in the world:

[“]Even on my worst days, I can always find three.” She must have sensed my skepticism because she gave our clasped hands a gentle shake. “Like this.” She looked around her kitchen, closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “The sun is shining, I can smell my pies baking. My family will fill this house tomorrow.”

 

“But what if it’s not enough?” I asked, embarrassed when a few of my tears spilled over.

 

Lorraine opened her eyes, let go of my hands, and wiped my tears away with cinnamon-scented fingers. “It has to be, Greer,” she said. “Because it’s all any of us have got.”

Amy Engel pulls no punches as she examines the aftereffects of murder, not only on the victims’ families but also on the killers’. Roy’s silence in the wake of homicides that he otherwise freely admits to committing harms more than it protects, underscoring how evil done in the service of what some may view as kindness only allows more evil to fester. Better, I Did It For You explains, for the truth to come out so that people can begin to heal in earnest, instead of nursing wounds made worse by the pressures of misplaced guilt and shame.