Black-Eyed Susans

May 11, 2015
This gripping psychological thriller from Heaberlin (Lie Still) alternates between the present and 1995, when 16-year-old Tessie Cartwright went missing and was subsequently found in a Texas wheat field covered by black-eyed Susans, barely alive, on top of three female corpses, two long dead and one only about a day old. Though the traumatized Tessie can recall only flashes of the incident, she testifies in the trial against accused serial killer Terrell Darcy Goodwin; Terrell is sentenced to death but is still alive on death row years later when someone plants black-eyed Susans in Tessie’s yard, a possible taunt from the real perpetrator. Still lacking recall, Tessie nevertheless agrees to help a group that fights to get death row convictions stayed or overturned. Aided by Terrell’s defense attorney and a DNA expert, she races to find evidence sufficient to prevent Terrell’s execution and to discover what really happened. The suspense builds as Tessie uncovers devastating secrets from the past en route to the shocking ending. Agent: Pam Ahearn, Ahearn Agency.

May 15, 2015
As the only survivor of a serial killer, Tessa Cartwright has spent the last 20 years trying to forget her past, but when the killer's execution date looms, she begins questioning everything she once believed. The media dubbed 16-year-old Tessa and the other Texas victims "Black-Eyed Susans" because of the flowers that covered the ground where they were found. Heaberlin (Playing Dead, 2012, etc.) wisely metes out the gory details of the 15 hours between when Tessa went missing and when she was discovered in a grave along with the freshly rotting corpse of one still-unidentified "Susan" and the bones of two others slowly over the course of the narrative, which shifts back and forth between past and present. Tessa's childhood best friend, Lydia, stands by her side throughout the trial until an alleged betrayal tears the friendship apart. Now the mother of a 14-year-old girl, Charlie, Tessa is convinced by a crusading anti-death penalty lawyer and an eminent forensic scientist to help secure a new trial for Terrell Darcy Goodwin, the man on death row for kidnapping her and murdering the other girls. Shaky eyewitness testimony and junk science convicted Goodwin back in 1994-Tessa had no memory of her attacker-and she's wracked by guilt that her testimony may have sent an innocent man to prison. Heaberlin takes what could have been the ingredients for just another episode of CSI and turns them into a truly compelling tale of the fragility of memory and elusive redemption.

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