It’s probably easier at this point to just assume that most people you meet have at least a passing interest in true crime—maybe I’m just hanging around in some weird circles, but it seems that America’s obsession with this morbid topic has reached a peak and shows no sign of abating.

Maggie Nelson’s personal experience, through the murder of the aunt she never knew, is a haunting, beautiful, grounded, real, honest, raw, and searching memoir/poetry/true crime encounter, and one I highly recommend.

I read The Red Parts when it came out a few years ago, not knowing that this book even existed until she mentioned it in those pages. I went out and found a copy right away, and then promptly ignored it until I was choosing a stack of ten books I really wanted to read before this year was up.

The Red Parts explores the truth of what happened to Jane, how her murder and not knowing had long-lasting consequences for the rest of her family, and Maggie’s search for truth about her own identity, to understand the need to know, and the why of it all. It is a brilliant book, one I read breathlessly, one that dug deep into my heart and made me think, really think, about myself and my own obsession with stories of murder. I’d consider it a must-read for the true crime fan.

This book is more of a meditation, with slippage, questions, uncertainty. We read from Jane’s own journal, from the book that was written about her murder, hear from the man she was going to marry. There isn’t a big reveal, the uncovering of a villain. This is Nelson’s investigation into what Jane meant as a person who lived, dreamed, and should have been—and what it meant that she didn’t.

Though it is poetry, it has a narrative style and reads like a story, effortlessly, something that only Maggie Nelson could capture.

If I could recommend one thing to potential readers, I’d say buy both books and read Jane and then The Red Parts. Get the full beautiful and sad story—memoir and murder, life and death and life moving on.