34 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 8, 2021
Review_FICTION
emerges permanently brain-damaged.
Attorney Jay Shenk persuades the boy’s
parents, Beth and Rich, to sue the hospital
and the medical personnel involved.
Neuroscientist Theresa Pileggi, an expert
on the human brain, testifies at the subse-
quent trial on the plaintiff’s behalf. In
2019, Shenk is drawn back into the case
when Rich is charged with the premedi-
tated murder of Pileggi, who was both
shot and hit in the head with a lamp. After
Rich confesses and potentially faces the
death penalty, he fires his public defender,
placing Shenk in the difficult position of
trying to save the life of a client who wants
to be executed. The shifts between events
a decade apart confuse more than they
generate suspense, and Wesley’s plight has
little emotional impact. Winters has been
better in crafting characters readers will
connect with. Agent: Joelle Delbourgo, Joelle
Delbourgo Assoc. (May)Legacy
Nora Roberts. St. Martin’s, $28.99 (448p)
ISBN 978-1-250-27293-5
Adrian Rizzo, the protagonist of this
melodramatic thriller from bestseller
Roberts (Hideaway), first meets her father,
Jonathan Bennett, a university professor
with a reputation for forcing sex on his
students, at age seven when he barges into
the Georgetown townhouse where she
lives with her nanny, Mimi, and her
mother, Lina Rizzo, a fitness expert with a
successful business called Yoga Baby. After
hitting Mimi, Jon attacks Adrian and
Lina. Fighting back, Lina kills Jon by
pushing him over a second-floor railing.
Though the death is ruled self-defense,
Lina, fearing the negative publicity, sends
Adrian to her parents in the small town of
Traveler’s Creek, Md. Meanwhile, Lina’s
career soars, and Adrian’s summer with her
loving grandparents is idyllic. Years later,
Lina and Adrian, now a teenager, resettle
in New York, where Adrian starts her own
fitness company. But each February,
Adrian receives a creepy poem coinciding
with a woman’s murder in different parts
of the country. Roberts knows how to
entertain, but the plot follows formula and
the gimmicky killer emerges as a carica-
ture with transparent motives. Established
fans will best appreciate this one. Agent:
Amy Berkower, Writers House. (May)How has the series changed since you
started it?
Many of the changes are because of
changes in the Mormon church that
have happened in real time. The 2015
policy of exclusion toward gay couples
and their children, for instance, was
not something I foresaw when I wrote
The Bishop’s Wife, the first in the series.
I did originally conceive of The
Prodigal Daughter before The Bishop’s
Wife came out, but it was a very
different story. Because the Mormon
church is, in my
view, very different
from the one in
2012, when I wrote
The Bishop’s Wife, my
treatment of that
church has changed.
Other things, such
as the movement of
my lead, Linda
Wallheim, away
from the church,
were always what
I’d planned, simply
because they seemed
more dramatic,
though I hadn’t
intended to leave myself.What’s surprised you the most about
how the series evolved?
I’ve been surprised at how the series
has affected my own life, pushing me
out of Mormonism perhaps faster than
I might have moved myself, because I
was perceived in a certain way because
of my being public about my ques-
tions, doubts, and criticisms of the
church and its leaders. I thought I wasjust writing fiction, but that hasn’t
been how it turned out. I am not
Linda, and Linda is not me. Nonethe-
less, there are some similarities in the
way we think about the difficulties of
being a Mormon woman.Is the horrific sex crime at the heart of
the book based on a real one?
It is. A friend of mine alerted me to a
story several years ago of a similar
crime at her local school and I trans-
formed it for the book and for my own
purposes. But I’m
afraid there are prob-
ably many stories that
are all too similar, both
in the Mormon com-
munity I write about
and across the world in
religious patriarchies.How have Mormons
responded to your
series?
I always targeted these
books to national,
non-Mormon readers,
and honestly, few
Mormons seem to have
found the books, since they’re not in
local Mormon bookstores. I’ve had
really varied responses from those
Mormons who have found the books.
Some tell me they’re a godsend and a
way to build a bridge to talk about
certain issues across family differences.
Some very conservative Mormons have
blasted me publicly about the books,
but I’m honestly not sure if they’ve
read them or just read about them.
—Lenny Picker[Q&A]
PW Talks with Mette Ivie Harrison
Trouble in Mormon Country
Harrison’s fifth series mystery, The Prodigal Daughter (Soho Crime,
May; reviewed on p. 35), challenges the patriarchal practices of the
Mormon church, which she left in 2019.©^
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