Ghost Girl: Surviving the Black Swan Murder―A Memoir

Eva Benefield, the daughter of the victim of the viral “Black Swan Murder,” describes coming of age amid grief, violence, and a true-crime spectacle, in a poignant memoir "relatable to anyone who’s experienced grief or witnessed evil up close. Eva tells her story with grace and even humor in these pages” (Shari Franke, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The House of My Mother). Eva was still in high school when her mother died suddenly of a heart attack. Within a year, her father marries Ashley Byers, a twenty-four-year-old former bikini model he has only known for a few weeks. “She looked sharp,” Eva says of her strange new stepmother, “like if you touched her you might bleed.” After a few months, Ashley convinces her new husband to open an international ballet company in Charleston, South Carolina. But soon the money runs out and Ashley shoots and kills Eva’s father.