Have you read my first book, Dead Like Me? Today, I’m going to tackle a question that’s come up in a couple of the book clubs I’ve met with. The same issue’s also been mentioned in a few of the reviews for Dead Like Me. SPOILER ALERT: STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK.

The question has to do with the believability that Detective Kate Springer kept her traumatic past a secret from her partner Patrick Jessup. In the book, Kate gets called out to a crime scene where the murdered girl reminds her of herself at the age of thirteen. Seeing the body of the girl brought back memories that Kate had buried long ago. This pushes her deeper into crisis as she’s already trying to deal with her childhood sexual abuse in therapy. Crisis is a term psychologists use for sexual assault survivors who are in the emergency stage of the healing process. This stage happens when a survivor is beginning to deal with memories of abuse and the suppressed feelings that come with it.

The childhood trauma that Kate endured was so horrific that in order to keep doing her job, to even put one foot in front of the other, she had to lock away all of her emotions into a mental box. By exposing her true feelings to her therapist, all of the once tightly sealed emotions began seeping through the cracks of this box. Kate was doing her best to keep control of everything. But in order to do that, she had to lock away anything that reminded her of the past.

Normally, Kate had keen detective skills but since she was in crisis, any clues reminding her of her past were brushed under the rug. This is why she didn’t realize what the daisy really meant.

When Robert White left Elgin after Kate’s mother confronted him with the knowledge of the sexual abuse, Kate completely shut out any memory of him. Again that was one of her coping mechanisms. She had to block it out in order to function. So when things started showing up that reminded her of Robert, her response was to shut it out.

Then to actually see Robert in her interrogation room, it completely turned her inside out. It was like all of her nerve endings were exposed and her feelings were all at a heightened state. She started acting illogically which made her keep things from her partner. Many readers held this against Kate. They couldn’t empathize with this part of her story because they had never experienced something like this or known anyone who had. Thus they thought it was all too unbelievable.

Did you have a problem with the believability factor? Hopefully this gives you a peek into my mind and why I wrote the story in this way.