LORI RADER-DAY tried writing fiction for the first time at age seven, when she turned her love for Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby into a rudimentary attempt at fan fiction. She discovered a love for dark stories by reading Lois Duncan. When she was twelve and had read everything in the children’s section of her town’s library, she was sent to the second floor to read among the adults. Scared of passing the circulation desk, Lori took a right-hand turn into the first open doorway—into the mystery room, where she discovered Mary Higgins Clark and Agatha Christie.
Lori dabbled with writing through high school and college, studying journalism at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana—twice, without ever, not once, becoming a journalist. In 2006, she decided to get serious about fiction and started a degree program in creative writing at Roosevelt University in Chicago. She started writing and publishing short stories and just after graduation in 2009, finished the first draft of a novel that went promptly into “the drawer,” mostly unseen by human eyes. Lori wrote and published two novels over the next several years, winning the 2015 Anthony Award for Best First Novel for The Black Hour and the 2016 Mary Higgins Clark Award for Little Pretty Things.
And then she opened the drawer. The Day I Died, rewritten, renamed, is the result, ten years after originally undertaking the story.
Lori’s next novel is in progress, slated for publication by HarperCollins William Morrow in 2018.
Lori’s all-time favorite writers: Agatha Christie, Shirley Jackson, Carson McCullers
Lori’s favorite contemporary mystery writers: Tana French, Catriona McPherson, Gillian Flynn, Lisa Lutz, Ann Cleeves—visit your local independent bookstores and read them, too!
The book Lori rereads every year: 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
Other most often reread books: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News
Favorite mystery TV: Vera, Sherlock, Elementary, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries
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About the book
The Day I Died Playlist
This list isn’t a marketing scheme—I actually write to music most of the time and always construct playlists for my novels. To start, I’ll gather a few songs I already own that seem thematically appropriate to my story (though I don’t usually know much about the story when I start writing it). Sometimes it’s the tune or tone of the track that gets it placed on the list. Sometimes it’s much more literal: lyrics speak to me and to the themes of the novel. The list always grows over time as I discover new songs to add, and I’m constantly searching for new music to inspire a few more pages.
“WHITE BLANK PAGE” BY MUMFORD & SONS
* * *
I was an immediate convert to the music of Mumford & Sons. This song had resonance for Anna’s career and for the dreams she has in the night, when the words trail and tighten around her. I originally heard these lyrics as “Wine Dark Page,” so if someone would like to write that song, I want to hear it.
“WHERE TO BEGIN” BY MY MORNING JACKET
* * *
Well, truthfully, this book began years before it was finished, but I chose this song not because of my beginning but Anna’s. Where does the strength come from to begin again, after you’ve lost everything? And then again?
“UNDER THE MICROSCOPE” BY MATTHEW SANTOS
* * *
This is just a tremendous song. Some songs demand to be written to. If Anna were asked to connect this song to her story, she’d point to that first meeting with the sheriff. He’s paying attention, much too closely.
“RIPTIDE” BY VANCE JOY
* * *
“I love you when you’re singing that song . . . I got a lump in my throat because you’re gonna sing the words wrong.” I was charmed by these lyrics, and imagined all the little moments between mother and child that Anna misses as her son starts to grow up and away from her. All the little moments in a life between people who love one another.
“COME PICK ME UP” BY RYAN ADAMS
* * *
A song about a couple having a not-happy ending in progress. When Anna remembers wanting to call Ray and let him know where they are, she knows it’s not a good idea, but can’t help wanting what would be easy. The devil she knows. (Not safe for work, this one.)
“OLD FRIEND” BY SEA WOLF
* * *
“Old friend come back home . . . Even though you always were alone . . . You had to push against the fates . . . Just to make it . . . Make it through the gate.” I picked up this song from hearing it on TV at some point. I’ve gotten very good at recognizing good writing songs, and spend far too much money on iTunes.
“A NEW LIFE” BY JIM JAMES
* * *
Anna has plenty of new lives, but they haven’t been as full as she needs them to be. Maybe this is the one she’ll get to keep?
“MESS IS MINE” BY VANCE JOY
* * *
Even independent women wouldn’t mind someone saying they’d take on all your baggage. If only you’d let them.
“LONG RIDE HOME” BY PATTY GRIFFIN
* * *
“Headlights staring at the driveway . . . The house is dark as it can be . . . I go inside and all is silent . . . It seems as empty as the inside of me.” For when the ride home isn’t just a road trip.
“GO INSANE” (LIVE) BY LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
* * *
This is not an unproblematic choice, given what we’ve heard about certain guitar players and certain ex-girlfriend singers, but it reminds me that all the characters in The Day I Died get to have a voice. Also, I have a not unproblematic crush on Lindsey Buckingham.
“THE YAWNING GRAVE” BY LORD HURON
* * *
This entire album, Strange Trails, is one long writing soundtrack for me. This track is particularly haunting, evocative of dark walks through the woods and of what awaits if Anna cannot save herself.
“BLOOD IN THE CUT” BY K.FLAY
* * *
(NSFW) I heard this song on the radio (bleeped) long after The Day I Died was written, but I so wish I’d had this in the playlist during drafting. Something about the tough lyrics and delivery—and perhaps because of the lyrics “Take my car and paint it black, take my arm break it in half . . . Take my head and kick it in, break some bread for all my sins”—the song reminded me of Anna and everything she had survived to be able to tell this story. Not everyone is so lucky.
“LUCKY NOW” BY RYAN ADAMS
* * *
“And the night will break your heart, but only if you’re lucky now.” Hmm. I just realized this song needs to be on the playlist for my next novel, too. “Am I really who I was?” Ryan sings, and that’s Anna’s question to answer in the end.
Reading Group Guide
1.When we first meet Anna, she can’t admit that she cares about the little boy who’s missing. What changes in this situation? How does Anna find compassion she didn’t think she had?
2.Anna’s only friend isn’t really a friend. She knows that “one of us had been a drowning person, and the other, a life raft.” How has being helped so much by Kent and others defined Anna’s ability to connect with other people?
3.How does the Ransey family’s history in the town of Parks color Sheriff Keller’s approach to the case of Aidan going missing? How can media representation or other commentary hurt the chances of justice being served?
4.The Dairy Bar is a place that Anna gravitates toward, a place she can reclaim from a childhood she’s had to leave behind. What are the touchstone locations of your childhood? Where is the place in your current life that reminds you most of a cherished place or person?
5.Anna returns to her old town and sees simultaneously what is the same and what is different, layers over time over top one another. (The word for this phenomenon is palimpsest.) Have you ever returned to a place you hadn’t been in years? What changes or enduring artifacts stood out to you?
7.Left for dead, Anna finds strength not just in her son but in the child she once was. What emotions are at work here?
8.What do you think will be different for Anna after the end of this story? How has she changed?
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Praise for The Day I Died
“Part police procedural, part psychological thriller, Rader-Day’s literate, understated novel shines a spotlight on domestic violence, loneliness, and the deadly secrets that lurk just below the surface of small-town America.”
—Sara Paretsky, New York Times bestselling author of Brush Back
“Secrets lie behind every loop, slant, and swirl of The Day I Died, Lori Rader-Day’s compelling story of a handwriting analyst searching for a lost boy. Richly written, complex, and imaginative . . . this is a perfect read for fans of Mary Higgins Clark.”
—Susanna Calkins, Macavity Award–winning author of the Lucy Campion Mysteries
“A stunning exploration of fear and choices—and their consequences. Lori Rader-Day is a major new talent.”
—Leslie Budewitz, two-time Agatha Award–winning author and past president of Sisters in Crime
“A vividly imagined and beautifully written mystery, The Day I Died is also a fully realized novel about domestic abuse and the past as tether. The book’s protagonist, a woman who can see other people’s secrets but desperately hides her own, is tied by that tether to the decisive moment of her life. The pull of the past draws her back to that fatal, fateful day as surely as Rader-Day draws in her readers.”
—Terence Faherty, Edgar Award–nominated author of The Quiet Woman
“In her masterful novel The Day I Died, Lori Rader-Day offers readers one of the most compelling and original voices in literature today. This is a psychological thriller, yes, but so much more. At heart, it’s a wise and compassionate exploration of loss—loss of self, of home, of direction, and for a while, even of hope. I found it beautifully written, satisfying on every level, and I couldn’t help but love it. I guarantee that you will, too.”
—William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author
“The Day I Died firmly establishes Lori Rader-Day as one of the most important voices currently writing mystery fiction. Her taut prose grips the reader and never lets go as she focuses on Anna Winger, a handwriting expert and small-town single mother, who is pulled into a murder investigation that forces her to see the writing on her own wall. Anna not only has to solve the murder, but she has to save the person she loves the most. Rader-Day’s sharp understanding of the human condition has been on display since her brilliant debut, but here, it glows and is even more jaw-dropping and insightful. You won’t want to miss a sentence. Especially the last one.”
—Larry D. Sweazy, award-winning author of Where I Can See You
Praise for Little Pretty Things
“Rader-Day again proves herself (after The Black Hour, 2014) a deft manipulator of dark atmosphere, witty dialogue, and complex, charismatic characters. Highly recommended for psychological thriller groupies, especially those who walk on the literary side of the genre and favor books like Tana French’s Faithful Place (2010) and Cornelia Read’s Madeline Dare series.”
—Booklist Starred Review
“Once again, Chicago author Rader-Day delivers a breathless psychological thriller with a killer first line, an irresistible mystery, and lean chapters soaked with suspense. Comparisons to Tana French (A Secret Place) and Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train) have become all-too-common in the mystery genre, but with two consistently great novels now under her belt, Rader-Day has proved their equal in crafting taut, literary mysteries with fascinating heroines.”
—BookPage
“[One of the] most arresting crime novels of 2015.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for The Black Hour
“A perfect thriller for summer . . . Rader-Day’s addictive prose is atmospheric and laced with dread.”
—BookPage
“Captivates from page one. . . . This reviewer was bowled over by the novel’s alternating points of view, superb storytelling, and pitch-perfect take on academia.”
—Library Journal Starred Review
“An exceptional debut. . . . An irresistible combination of menace, betrayal, and self-discovery.”
—Publishers Weekly Starred Review
“An unputdownable read.”
—Booklist Starred Review
“A terrific whydunnit! This dark page-turner of a puzzle—well written, with bite and style and edge and simmering conflict—will keep you riveted from page one.”
—Hank Phillippi Ryan, author of Say No More
“The Black Hour is the rarest of mysteries: one that wants to keep you turning pages in a cold sweat, suspecting every character you meet of both the best and the worst motives; and also one that has something complicated and important to say about the forces that impel us toward death . . . and life. It’s an extraordinary debut, marking the arrival of a major new voice in literary suspense.”
—Christopher Coake, author of You Came Back
Also by Lori Rader-Day
The Black Hour
Little Pretty Things
Credits
Cover design by Owen Corrigan
Cover photograph © plainpicture/Julio Calvo
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE DAY I DIED. Copyright © 2017 by Lori Rader-Day. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
EPub Edition April 2017 ISBN 9780062560285
ISBN 978-0-06-256029-2
About the Publisher
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