The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh

The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh, 306 pages.

When Cheri Stoddard's body is found, Henbane, MO is in an uproar. It's not so much the murder, but the way the body was found: "It was common knowledge that in the hills, with infinite hiding places, bodies disappeared. They were fed to hogs or buried in the woods or dropped into abandoned wells. They were not dismembered and set out on display." So it's an odd world, potentially violent, with lots of secrets, and maybe not the nicest, safest area for a pretty young woman like Lucy to grow up. But Lucy does have her family, at least her dad, Carl, and her Uncle Crete. Lucy's mom, Lila, ran off, disappeared, or died ages ago. Lucy has friends too, Bess and her mother, Gabby (who was Lila's friend), Birdie and Daniel. Cheri had only one friend, Lucy. Cheri had been an odd child, slow, poor, and unloved. When she disappeared at age 18, almost everyone, even Lucy, assumed that she had run away. When hers body was discovered a year later, Lucy was devastated, and felt as though she had failed Cheri. Determined to do right by Cheri now, Lucy starts looking into her friend's disappearance and finds some disturbing connections to people she thought she knew, and to her mother, a woman she never had the chance to know.
A taut, well-written thriller, where monstrous things happen, but where the characters are all people who could explain the steps that led them to their current situations, people who would never describe themselves as monstrous.
All of the characters are well-formed and have the author's sympathy. Even the ickiest among them get to offer some explanation for their actions. A really good read.
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