The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers

"Mama lay on the floor. Blood dripped on the green and brown linoleum."

Title: The Murderer's Daughters
Author: Randy Susan Meyers
ISBN: 9780312576981
Publisher: St. Martin's Press/2009
Pages: 307

It is a touching novel about two sisters, whose father has murdered their mother and also had stabbed Mercy, the younger sister. Mercy survives and it falls upon Lulu to look after her. None of their relatives are keen to take them in. Both are sent to a home for children, which is not really a good place to live. By being good, they are taken in for foster care by a good family. But can't belong to that family. Both realise that they onlyhave each other to fall back on and no one else.

Lulu, the older sister, doesn't wish to have any kind of connection with their father, who is in the prison forlife. But Mercy can't stop herself from visiting him in the jail at regular intervals. It has some effecton their relationship but they choose to ignore it.

Told in the alternate voices of both the sisters, it reaches out to us, touching us to the core. Having lost both parents, one forever, other in prison, they can't fulfil that void. It affects their relationship with other people too. When after three decades, Ther father is supposed to come out, both are scared in their own ways.

Everyone wishes to know why did their father stab Mercy, who was only five years old. A crime of passion destroys a family. And is it easy to overcome it? It is oneof those books which lingers in our mind. We feel for the sisters and the stigma of being a murderer's daughter stays on. Although they try to hide it from the world.