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A family’s loyalty is put to the ultimate test
Kirsten Hammarstrom hasn’t been home to her tiny corner of rural Wisconsin in years—not since the mysterious disappearance of a local teenage girl rocked the town and shattered her family. Kirsten was just nine years old when Stacy Lemke went missing, and the last person to see her alive was her boyfriend, Johnny—the high school wrestling star and Kirsten’s older brother. No one knows what to believe—not even those closest to Johnny—but the event unhinges the quiet farming community and pins Kirsten’s family beneath the crushing weight of suspicion.
Now, years later, a new tragedy forces Kirsten and her siblings to return home, where they must confront the devastating event that shifted the trajectory of their lives. Tautly written and beautifully evocative, The Mourning Hours is a gripping portrayal of a family straining against extraordinary pressure, and a powerful tale of loyalty, betrayal and forgiveness.
The Mourning Hours
Paula Treick DeBoard
For my Tea Time friends, because I always said I would.
Contents
A Conversation with the Author
prologue
October 2011
Just outside Milwaukee, I saw the lights behind me—Wisconsin Highway Patrol—and pulled over to the shoulder.
Even before the cop tapped on the window, I started fumbling in the shoulder bag I had been lugging around since that morning, since San Francisco. I had packed in a hurry—my cell phone, a tube of lip gloss, a stack of undergrad papers to be graded, a dog-eared copy of US Weekly.
While I searched for the power window button, I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass: wrinkled clothes, grease forming at my hairline, mascara from twelve hours ago smudged under my eyes like twin bruises.
“I know, I was speeding,” I said, even before the window came to a stop. The night was cold—was it really almost winter in the Midwest? I had been living in a mild haze of seasonless fog, and this chill nipped straight through my T-shirt. It was as if I had spent years walking on a treadmill and was just now finding my