"Jack Olsen's particular gift is his ability to illuminate the souls of his characters." —Jonathan Kellerman
Joe Gere said he died on the afternoon his twelve-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared.
In September 1985, Brenda Gere vanished from her family's home in Clearview, Washington. From the first moments of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing bodybuilder with a history of violence. But there was no proof, no body, and no answers. Tips poured in. Volunteers combed the Cascade forests in the largest search in Northwest history. Years passed. Brenda's blue eyes and bright clothes faded into a painful absence that never left.
The disappearance destroyed Joe Gere. A former cop consumed by guilt and rage, he felt he should have been able to protect his daughter. He descended into alcoholism, and in 1988, shot himself in front of Elaine and their sons.
Elaine endured.
It took six years for Brenda's remains to be found. Eight years for Green to stand trial. Through all of it — through Joe's death, through the agonizing uncertainty, through raising her sons alone — Elaine Gere never stopped fighting for her daughter's memory or her family's survival.
In a striking departure from his celebrated portraits of killers, Jack Olsen, the New York Times bestselling author known as "the dean of true crime," tells this story entirely through the eyes of the family. Not the predator. Not the investigation. The people who were left behind had to find a reason to go on.
As one reviewer wrote, Salt of the Earth "cuts not just across but over the top of the true crime genre." It is less a crime story than a portrait of indomitability: an ordinary American woman facing extraordinary loss and refusing, year after year, to be broken.
