02304cam a2200301 4500 509664097 TxAuBib 20211005120000.0 200821s2021||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2020036859 9780593191569 HRD 27.00 0593191560 HRD 27.00 TxAuBib Tucker, Nancy, 1993- The first day of Spring [BOOK] / Nancy Tucker. New York : Riverhead Books, 2021. ©2021. 345 pages ; 24 cm. "A novel"--Jacket. "A tense, psychological novel about what propels one 8-year-old girl to murder, and the complex ways this past chases her down in later life. Chrissie is eight years old and she has a secret: she has just killed a boy. The feeling of it made her belly fizz like soda pop. Across her neighborhood, Chrissie's playmates and their parents are tearful and terrified. But Chrissie rules the roost - she's the best at wall-walking, she knows how to get free candy, and now she has a secret, thrilling power she doesn't get to experience much at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer. Twenty years later, Chrissie has a new identity and a new name. As "Julia," she is working in a cafe to support herself and her six-year-old daughter, Molly. All she wants is afresh start, but the past hasn't seemed to let her and Molly alone, and when, suddenly, their future together is threatened, Chrissie/Julia must find a new way to take matters into her own hands. Nancy Tucker leaves the reader breathless as she considerswhat happens when innocence and survival instincts collide. Tucker writes from professional experience in pediatric mental health, and she inhabits the voices of her young protagonists with a shocking authenticity and precision that moves the reader fromsympathy to humor to horror to heartbreak and back again"-- Provided by publisher. 20211005. Mothers and daughters Fiction. Murder Fiction. Children Crimes against Fiction. Violence in children Fiction. Thrillers (Fiction.) Psychological fiction.