The Lovely Bones

Over the past few weeks I have been reading the book The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. So far I have really enjoyed this book. It is basically about a 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon, growing up in the 1970’s. One day on her way back from school, she decides to take a shortcut through the cornfield. On her way she finds a man named Mr. Harvey—a neighbor of hers. He somehow manipulates her into going down in a hole that he had made as a playground for the neighborhood children, but instead, he brutally rapes and murders her. After the incident, she goes to a place called the inbetween—a place that is not entirely earth or heaven. From there, she watches the aftermath of her disappearance and its affect on the lives of those she knew.  The story goes on to show how while she watches from afar, all of her friends and family grow up and their lives change.

            One interesting character is Susie’s father. After Susie is declared officially dead, her father goes a little crazy.  He started to suspect Mr. Harvey of killing Susie after a strange encounter with him in Mr. Harvey’s backyard when he is building a traditional bridal tent and then makes a strange remark about Susie’s death. Once he has realized that it is Mr. Harvey who killed Susie, Mr. Salmon makes it his overall goal to put him in jail. He tells the detective assigned to Susie’s case, Len, of his idea but Len says that there is nothing he can do without real evidence. This is when Susie’s father starts to go crazy—when he knows something about who killed Susie, but he has no way of actually proving it. He ends up beating up a neighborhood teen in the middle of the night after mistaking him for Mr. Harvey, and that is when his family realizes that Susie’s death has had the biggest impact of him, and how they need to help him in any way they can.

            I think that Mr. Salmon has a complete right to be angry, because it must be horrible to know something and have no way of making it matter. Without the evidence that he doesn’t have, he cannot in anyway put Mr. Harvey behind bars. In the end, Susie’s sister risks her life by going into Mr. Harvey’s house and looking for the evidence. She ends up finding it, but before the police can take him to jail, he reasons to them why he has what he does, and then flee’s the state.