See How Small

It begins one summer evening in a small Texas town. Two men walk into an ice cream shop shortly before it closes. They bind the three teenager girls working behind the counter. They set fire to the shop. They disappear. This horrific, mysterious crime is the subject of Scott Blackwood's new novel.

Loosely based on the 1991 Yogurt Shop Murders in Austin, Texas, See How Small explores a community's reactions to the brutal and seemingly random murder of these three girls. It is told through the perspectives of the community's survivors, witnesses, suspects, and yes, the deceased girls. Among the people we meet is Jack Dewey, the fireman who ran into the burning building and discovered the girls' bodies, and whose life becomes haunted by the girls' memory. We see Kate Ulrich, the mother of two murdered girls, who finds that in fighting the community's need to narrate her life in light of the murders, she's also losing her connection to the girls' lives. A suspect in the murders, Michael Greer, now with a daughter of his own, is haunted by his inadvertent participation in it and his brother's earlier tragic death. And Rosa Heller, an investigative journalist who tries to piece together the mystery by interviewing involved people, becomes lost in the community's false memories and lies and regrets. Above everything else is the girls' shared narration as they watch over the community during the five years following their deaths, as they attempt to comfort their town.

See How Small will remind readers of the paradoxical promises of security and belonging, remembering and forgetting, and our collective need to both obscure and name evil. It is a short, powerful novel.