About the book:
A finalist for the Edgar and Mary Higgins Clark Awards, in her riveting debut Invisible City, journalist Julia Dahl introduces a compelling new character in search of the truth about a murder and an understanding of her own heritage.
Just months after Rebekah Roberts was born, her mother, an Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn, abandoned her Christian boyfriend and newborn baby to return to her religion. Neither Rebekah nor her father have heard from her since. Now a recent college graduate, Rebekah has moved to New York City to follow her dream of becoming a big-city reporter. But she’s also drawn to the idea of being closer to her mother, who might still be living in the Hasidic community in Brooklyn.
Then Rebekah is called to cover the story of a murdered Hasidic woman. Rebekah’s shocked to learn that, because of the NYPD’s habit of kowtowing to the powerful ultra-Orthodox community, not only will the woman be buried without an autopsy, her killer may get away with murder. Rebekah can’t let the story end there. But getting to the truth won’t be easy–even as she immerses herself in the cloistered world where her mother grew up, it’s clear that she’s not welcome, and everyone she meets has a secret to keep from an outsider.
About the author:
Julia has been writing about crime since 2004 when Seventeen magazine sent her to cover the story of a young Birmingham, Ala., girl who had been killed by her mother. Since then, she has worked as a freelance reporter at the New York Post, the deputy managing editor of The Crime Report, and now covers crime and justice for CBSNews.com.
Julia’s feature articles have appeared in Mental Floss, Salon, Pacific Standard, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and the Daily Beast, among others. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation and the Nation Institute for her reporting on criminal justice issues.
Before turning her attention to crime and justice, Julia was an editor at Redbook and Marie Claire. She began her career fact-checking at Entertainment Weekly.
INVISIBLE CITY is her first novel.
My Review:
Invisible City is, in my opinion, an interesting and unique crime story with a fascinating main character. Rebekah Roberts, 22 years old, is struggling with her identity and her past, having been abandoned by her Hasidic mother when she was born and raised by her Christian father in Florida. Rebekah Roberts now lives and works in New York as a stringer for a tabloid newspaper.
When she is sent to cover the story of a body being discovered within the Hasidic community, Rebekah starts investigating and discovers secrets, deception and concealment’s within this closed community.
Personally, I thought the author portrayed the secret world of the orthodox Jews in Brooklyn in a fascinating and well researched manner. An interesting and gripping story and I look forward to reading the next book in this series.
