Rabbit Heart

A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Story

By: Kristine S. Ervin

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

A Washington Post “Most Anticipated” Book of the Year • A New York Times “Must Read”

For readers of My Dark Places and The Fact of a Body, a beautiful, brutal memoir documenting one woman’s search for identity alongside her family's decades-long quest to identify the two men who abducted—and murdered—her mother

"This graceful resulting memoir wrestles with failures of justice; the nuances of gendered violence; and the difficulty of making do when we are not whole."—Elle

Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life.

In her mother’s absence, Ervin tries to reconstruct a woman she can never fully grasp—from her own memory, from letters she uncovers, and from the stories of other family members. As more information about her mother's death comes to light, Ervin’s drive to know her mother only intensifies, winding into her own fraught adolescence. She reckons with contradictions of what a woman is allowed to be—a self beyond the roles of wife, mother, daughter, victim—what a “true” victim is supposed to look like, and, finally, how complicated and elusive justice can be.

Told fearlessly and poetically, Rabbit Heart weaves together themes of power, gender, and justice into a manifesto of grief and reclamation: our stories do not need to be simple to be true, and there is power in the telling.

©2024 Kristine S. Ervin (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"The author’s investigations of the concept of victimhood are insightful and urgent . . . Ervin laces the poetic text with unforgettable moments of startling, shattering honesty, many of which feel impossible to witness. This is the genius of the author’s prose and what makes this book remarkable: Ervin’s unflinchingly brutal gaze, combined with her insistence on facing the worst parts of her past, make it equally impossible for us to look away."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Poet and essayist Ervin grapples in her moving debut memoir with the emotional damage caused by a parent’s violent death . . . In lucid prose, Ervin unflinchingly documents her grief and untangles how her mother’s murder impacted myriad aspects of her life. This will haunt readers long after they’ve turned the last page."—Publishers Weekly

“There are some books that are written to avoid the brutality of the world and other books that capture with an uncanny clarity the inescapable truth. Kristine S. Ervin froze me in my tracks from the first page of her startling and transfixing memoir, a work fueled by a daughter’s undying love for her mother and a refusal to stay silent about violence. Rabbit Heart will stay with me forever.”—Michele Filgate, editor of What My Mother and I Don't Talk About

Life driven brilliance

The story captured me with its profound way of intertwining life, trauma, and the telling of it all. The way she’s sitting in court and describing her feelings in between words spoken; her anger and frustration towards society’s scripted, automatic playback, especially when people try to connect non-traumatic grief experiences to the author’s experiences. The author’s insights into her adolescent and young adult life experiences and connections to her mother’s death are exceptional reflections. Additionally I felt and saw her growth as the author moved through life with this trauma that will never “get easier,”

The author’s candor.

As an Oklahoman, I was a teen when this happened. As a reader of true crime books, documentaries, reports for decades before it became such a popular, albeit macabre interest, my experience is that the truest understanding of a crime and all its ripples, comes when I hear it from a living victim’s POV - from the perspective of a loved one left behind.

The author draws readers in by articulately and really sharing her life experiences and how they were impacted by her mother’s violent, torturous abduction, rape, & murder. I pray it was cathartic for her & wish to thank her for finding the words to convey her unabashedly shared truth. That could not have been an easy task.

I lost my oldest brother to murder, in Tulsa no less, when I was barely 17. His violent death colored my life as well. However, even if death hadn’t touched my life at such a young age, I believe I’d have still related to the author’s pain & poor decisions simply because she took me there, as a teen and as a woman. It is somehow comforting to know that I am not alone in my, often misguided & self-harming, life decisions. Thank you for entrusting readers with your story, your Mom’s story.

Mixed Experience

Ms. Ervin took risks in telling her story. I am sorry for the horrific, violent murder of her mother! I don’t underestimate what it might’ve taken to share such a personal story. I regret to say, it wasn’t the listen I hoped for. there were definitely some strengths but there was a fragmented quality to the narrative. I don’t know if that was intentional, it might’ve been a way to convey the quality of trauma. Also, that quality of fragmentation could be a way to show that some thing about the author’s mother was always out of reach. This is a moment in time when I receive information about the power of women differently than I did before the Dobbs Decision. I just didn’t find it to be paced with the reader in mind. There was a great deal of disclosure in the book. The listener gets insight into some very personal situations and painful ones at that. Still, disclosure and intimacy aren’t synonymous. The book conflates those conflates those qualities.

Generational Trauma, Unpacked

This book is a tough listen. The author’s mother’s death is the starting point but it’s how that death reverberates through her family that is the more harrowing read.

Powerful and Necessary

This is a necessary read for men. Period.

Read. To. The. Very. End.

Otherwise it will feel incomplete.