In 1961, Miriam Allen DeFord imagined a future where murder has been nearly eradicated through social reform and a benevolent federal police force. When 18-year-old Madolin Akkra is found dead in Central Park, the peaceful facade of this utopian society cracks. Her younger sister Margret, determined to uncover the truth, embarks on her own investigation that leads her into the underground world of the Naturists, anti-modernists who reject the ordered society around them. What begins as a murder inquiry becomes something more complex: a teenage girl's reckoning with the gap between the society she's been promised and the one she actually inhabits. The twist is quietly devastating, the death wasn't murder at all, but a tragic accident caused by two boys engaged in a youthful prank. DeFord uses this genre setup to explore how young people navigate adult worlds of secrets and loss.
