Kukafka skillfully uses the second-person present tense to heighten the drama, and toward the end she makes devastatingly clear the toll taken by Packer’s killings. Danya Kukafka Notes on an Execution: A Novel Paperback Deckle Edge, Jan. Those sections alternate with passages from the points of view of his mother, who was also abused, and of a New York State police investigator devoted to getting justice for Packer’s victims. He grew up with an abusive father and began killing and mutilating animals when he was three. Flashbacks, starting with Packer’s birth to a 17-year-old mother in 1973, trace his path from childhood to what seem to be his final hours. Danya Kukafka’s Notes on an Execution is an irresistible, unbearably tense thriller a poignant, deeply compassionate tale of resilience and a vital intervention in the way we talk about violent crime, its endless reverberations and foremost its survivors. He knows what hes done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. That surprising attitude is accounted for by the early revelation that he befriended one of the prison guards and is plotting a last-minute escape. Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours.

However, Packer, who’s killed multiple women across the country, including in Texas and New York, isn’t worried. In Kukafkas unshakable, deeply compassionate second novel (following Girl in Snow), a Death Row inmates final hours spark a meditation on murder and our. Her newest novel, Notes on an Execution, also an IndieNext Pick and national bestseller.

This masterly thriller from Kukafka ( Girl in Snow) opens on death row in a Texas prison, where Ansel Packer is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in 12 hours. Girl in Snow has been translated into over a dozen languages worldwide.

Book notes execution danya kukafka