*Signed Bookplate* Eva was still in high school when her mother died suddenly of a heart attack. Within a year, her father marries Ashley Byers, a twenty-four-year-old former bikini model he has only known for a few weeks. “She looked sharp,” Eva says of her strange new stepmother, “like if you touched her you might bleed.” After a few months, Ashley convinces her new husband to open an international ballet company in Charleston, South Carolina. But soon the money runs out and Ashley shoots and kills Eva’s father. The crime was dubbed in the news media as “The Black Swan Murder.” Eva, now orphaned and in college, is suddenly “awash in tabloid gore” and must figure out how to make rent and survive. Reeling from the sudden loss of both her parents and the looming criminal trial of her stepmother, Eva begins to navigate the confusing world of adulthood all alone.