Awakened by a struggle, a young girl hears her mother's voice at the threshold of her parents' bedroom.

"Don't hurt me", the mother pleads. The girl pictures her father's menacing presence. She raps on the door. "Go back to bed," she's told, "everything is alright." But it isn't. Before morning's first light, her mother is dead and the secret of what she heard is born. The secret becomes the girl’s companion, accompanying her to school, infiltrating relationships, provoking imaginary illnesses, sweeping away memory. For thirty years the cause of death was said to be a cerebral hemorrhage, and then two more reasons emerge, all different. What was the essence of her mother while she was alive? How did she die? Why didn't she walk into the room when she heard her mother in distress? The young girl matures along with the secret as she tries to find the narrative that will give her closure, that will relieve the guilt she carries.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Mickey Murphy was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in the suburb of Wheaton spending most summers on Big Fish Lake in Minnesota. She has worked extensively in the field of education, teaching elementary school students, as principal of an elementary school, and as a clinical instructor at The University of Utah where she taught literacy and ran the Early Childhood Program and at Westminster College where she taught literacy. She has worked with autistic children in a clinical setting, was a juvenile probation officer and a crisis worker in a children's hospital. She holds a master's degree in social work, as well as a BA in elementary education. In addition to writing The Coroner's Lie, the author is working on a book about meth addiction as well as a book of poetry.
The author also works in multi-media, primarily Polaroid transfers and collage. She is an amateur classical pianist, perfecting most of the Bach Inventions during the pandemic. She is married with two adult children and lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts.