Rick Harsch

Voices After Evelyn Rick Harsch

Voices after Evelyn seeks not so much to dig up a cold case—the 1953 disappearance of La Crosse, Wisconsin, babysitter Evelyn Hartley— as reopen its heart. A fugue of voices across time (cracked, offensive, profound) reverberating toward today, when the phantoms of so-called innocence and greatness grow scarier than anything that took Evelyn away. An unsolved crime that jaundiced the way a town saw itself and its relationship to the outside world is rendered into a polyphonic, farcical, yet accurate visitation to the 1950s Midwest, where banality and inspired caprice make for an odd mix of the hilarious and terrifying.