The Lost Night: A Memoir - Reviews

"As a detective, Ms. Howard fails. She never learns the identity of her father's killer. But as a memoirist, she succeeds brilliantly. "The Lost Night" is enthralling, a skillfully narrated story that begins as a tale of detection but quickly becomes something more."
--The New York Times
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"[T]urns out to be nothing like the narrowly focused true-crime narrative that the subtitle leads you to expect. Most of it is Ms. Howard's own story, and that part is at least as involving as the appalling tale of her father's murder, if not more so . . . Indeed, no small part of the force of "The Lost Night" comes from its author's startling lack of self-pity . . . a quintessentially American narrative of self-creation and redemption, a postmodern "Gatsby" with a hard-earned, doubt-tinged happy ending. I don't know when I've read a better first book."
--Wall Street Journal

"Powerful . . . more intense and real than your typical true-crime story . . . this heartfelt memoir is about one young woman reconciling with the past, and in that process discovering the difference between loving the living and missing the dead."
--San Francisco Chronicle
Named a Best Book of 2005
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"Howard, an arts writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, delivers a stunning debut. Forgoing the true-crime treatment, Howard remains restrained, her focus on the broad emotional panorama of the story instead of lurid details and self-pity. In crisp, unadorned prose, she explores broken families, drugs, rural California, and the hard emotional work of remembering."
--Bookmarks Magazine

"Heartfelt . . . illuminates a bond between father and daughter that neither time nor death can undo."
--Washington Post
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"This refreshingly honest memoir isn't your run-of-the-mill true crime mystery . . . a penetrating journey into the nature of memory, both suppressed and imagined, and the resulting traumas that reverberate for decades after such a violent loss."
--Bookslut
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"An abundantly candid and dramatically riveting account of one young woman's courageous determination to understand the unfathomable."
--Booklist

"Unfolds with the urgency of a thriller . . . clear-sighted, propulsive prose . . . What begins as a quest for justice winds up a complex, compulsively readable meditation on the nature of reconciliation, whether it is with your family, your past, or yourself."
--Elle.com
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"Not an attempt at vengeance but rather a profoundly personal account of a California Central Valley childhood defined by chaotic family life . . . poignant."
--Publishers Weekly

"An uncommon glimpse into the aftermath of a murder as seen through the eyes of one of its peripheral victims . . . a haunting portrait of a father-and a night-lost but a family found."
--Library Journal

"Not a typical true-crime book . . . By the conclusion, we've been so immersed in her tale, it feels like a resolution for all of us."
--San Francisco Magazine

"Howard’s odyssey through her own “lost” life holds out riches and humane possibilities for those who imagine only darkness can answer unforgivable crimes."
--Santa Barbara Independent

"A powerful document on loss, reconciliation, and the slippery nature of memory."
--SF Weekly
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Praise from Other Authors

"Rachel Howard pulls no punches, offers no simple answers--and this is what you want in a memoir. I admire Rachel Howard, not only for what she has lived through, but for the eloquence, the compassion, the beauty that she has drawn out of this tragedy. By guiding us through that lost night, and the countless losses that followed, Howard has given us a great gift—the gift of a life reclaimed."
--Alison Smith, author of Name All the Animals

"From the first page to the last, I read Rachel Howard's spellbinding memoir with my heart in my mouth. A riveting exploration of grief, suspicion, and the tangled ties that make up the modern family. Her need to uncover the the identity of the person responsible for the vicious stabbing of her beloved but flawed father compels her on a brave, emotional quest for truth. I turned the pages late into the night . . . A clear-sighted writer, willing to admit to the gaps in fact and memory that will always remain. The true triumph of her story is the hard-won, if uneasy truce she ultimately establishes with the past."
--Anna Cypra Oliver, author of Assembling My Father: A Daughter's Detective Story

"The genres of True Crime and Memoir both need more books like The Lost Night. Rachel's memoir is important and enlightening. She is very brave for taking on the telling of this story."
--Jeanine Cummins, author of A Rip in Heaven

"The Lost Night is more than a chronicle of a murder, more than a narrative of a family blown apart in the wake of a harrowing event. Rachel Howard has told a strikingly vivid story of a little girl forced to endure and ultimately survive the betrayals, abuse and misgivings of the most dangerous kind of adults – those who care for her. With her candid and fluid language, Howard’s exquisitely woven tale thrusts its reader into the zone of nightmares and takes us on a ride through the hot and arid world of California's Central Valley, revealing its ghosts and its deliverance."
--Anne N. Marino, author of The Collapsible World