This is author Elena Mikalsen’s third book, and with each her prose has tightened. Here, she draws upon her experience as a psychologist. Her protagonist, college student Emma, has been raped, beaten, and left for dead by a football player. She is forced from school and spends years trying to block out the attack. Eventually she moves on, finds a loving husband, and has a high-school-aged daughter. Emma works in marketing for a pharmaceutical company. When her company is bought out by another, she learns her new boss is her rapist. All her old feelings of despair and anger return. She tucked tail and ran after the incident and decides she won’t do that again. She vows revenge.
This emotion-packed thriller is particularly apt in light of the current #MeToo movement. Emma’s rape kit was destroyed before it could be tested. The people who were supposed to help her (her counselors, the dean, even the police) sweep her rape under the carpet—all so the school could build a sports complex.
Adding to the drama are Emma’s infertility and the fact she’s never told her husband, Aidan, that she was raped. Emma’s desire for revenge endangers not only herself, but her family, and often approaches illegal methods.
Mikalsen also provides an intimate look into the world of the pharmaceutical industry. Like many of the mega-industries in American, Big Pharma is full of graft and corruption with profits made at the cost of people’s lives. As a physician, I found these elements accurate and thought they gave a sense of verisimilitude to the novel.
This book reads as a near-documentary of many of America’s current flaws.
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All the Silent Voices is available through:
Amazon | B&N | Wild Rose Press
