New Novel Parallels Summer of Missing Girls

Aug. 29 -- A novel that came out out of nowhere and burst to the top of the best-seller lists has a plot line that sounds eerily familiar in what seems to be the summer of missing girls.

The Lovely Bones, a debut novel by Alice Sebold, which is Good Morning America's "Read This!" book club selection this month, has hit No. 1 on both The New York Times best-seller list and Amazon.com. In the novel, teenager Susie Salmon narrates the story from heaven after she is raped and murdered on her way home from school.

While adjusting to a new home, in her own personal heaven, Susie watches her family members deal with the feelings of despair that have invaded their everyday lives since her death.

The girl's tale seems all the more gripping in light of a recent slew of highly publicized crimes committed against children, including 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, who Salt Lake City authorities say was kidnapped from her bedroom by an armed man, and 5-year-old Samantha Runnion, who was sexually assaulted and killed after being abducted in California.

In Oregon City, the bodies of missing teens Miranda Gaddis, 13, and Ashley Pond, 12, were buried in the yard of a neighbor who is expected to be indicted in connection with their deaths. After Gaddis' body was discovered, one of her girlfriends spoke of the afterlife.

"I wanted to believe so badly that she was gonna be alive," the friend said. "I know she's in heaven now."

A Vision of Heaven

In The Lovely Bones, Sebold describes the heaven of her teenage narrator, Susie.

"We had been given, in our heavens, our simplest dreams," she writes. "There were no teachers in the school. We never had to go inside except for art class. The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue."

She did not have a "light bulb moment" of inspiration that made her decide to write the book from the perspective of someone in heaven, Sebold said. She had been working on another book that fell flat, and switched off to write some poetry, as is her custom when she hopes to fuel her prose.