The Dead Girl

By Melanie Thernstrom

Book Overview

A classic true-crime memoir of the murder of Berkeley student Roberta Lee in 1984, written by her close friend, desperate for justice. Gripping, heartbreaking, and full of details about the investigation, the book is also a portrait of a generation.

Roberta Lee, a Berkeley student of unusual promise, went running one Sunday in November 1984 with her lover, Bradley Page. He came back alone. Roberta, sometimes volatile and moody, had run off on her own, he said. When she failed to return, one of the largest missing-person searches in California history was launched. Five weeks later, her battered body was found on a bed of branches in a shallow grave. Within hours, Page had confessed to the murder of Roberta Lee--and then recanted. The story of the dead girl had begun.

Melanie Thernstrom, a brilliant writer and poet, was Roberta's closest friend. In this haunting, multi-layered memoir, she has written a heart-breaking tribute, both elegy and celebration, to her lost friend. With unflinching honesty and infinite grace, Thernstrom attempts to make sense of a death fundamentally nonsensical: weaving together news clippings and old photographs, Roberta's letters and her own recollections, she reconstructs the horrific crime, the agonizing search for the body, the trial and its wrenching, explosive climax.

Through the filter of memory, Roberta herself--gifted, fiercely intelligent, yearning for love--is rendered achingly alive, and Thernstrom offers a powerful and deeply personal account of grief, as well as a raw-nerved portrait of a generation for whom the future is uncertain and threatening.

With its enduring themes of innocence and evil, truth and uncertainty, tangled human motives and feelings, The Dead Girl is a complex exploration of the nature of reality and the frail, shifting, suspect ways in which we respond to it. In her stubborn refusal to let her dead friend be forgotten, Melanie Thernstrom has created a superb collage of memory, loss, and redemption.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1681379147
• ISBN13: 9781681379142
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Absolutely phenomally moving and heart wrenching. The most moving book I have ever read!

This book is unlike anything I have ever read. It offers a true journey into the mind and soul of a surviving victim. It's an agonizing journey at times but the grace and beauty of the author's writing marks a stark contrast to the events she is often describing. Not a book for people who want the sensationalistic "movie of the week" in book form. This instead is an amazing elegy to a senselessly murdered friend. If you allow it into your mind it will force you to think not just of crime and murder but of life and death and the very nature of existence. The author bears her soul sharing her innermost thoughts and feelings and her beautiful honest and unpretentious expression of them is a wonderful gift to the reader This book totally transcends the genre of "true crime". I have read close to 1000 books about crime, some great, some not very good but I think this may be the best book of them all. Absolutely incredible!

The impact of death on a young best friend

I am reading this book for the third time -- something I do rarely. Be not deceived, this book does not belong housed with the True Crime genre. It is not about murder and the hunt for a killer although that appears to be the foundation of the story. It is written by a literary writer and not a sensationalist journalist. It is about the impact such a crime has on the lives of those who loved the victim, in this case, the best friend of the victim, through her perceptions and emotions. The book may be more fully appreciated by those who, in their late teens and early twenties, have lost significant relationships through death and by those who study the impact of such trauma.

Great First book, this lady can really write

Melanie Thernstrom has written a very informative and well thought out book about the loss of a friend. Melanie; BiBi is in a better place now, I know. Don't beat yourself up over her death, or your own life. You have a great talent, hope you continue to use it. Have more faith in yourself;I do.