Hidden Victims: The Other Side of Murder

In March 1980, several days after his wife and children left him, the author's older brother, Kenneth Andre, who lived in rural Oregon, fatally shot four of his neighbors. He then returned home to wait for the police to arrest him. In Franck's deeply personal, at times moving account of the crime, she speaks more about how she and her family and the victims' families reacted than about the investigation and court process that sentenced her brother to life in prison. Andre, it emerges, was mentally unbalanced. ``From all that has happened I have gained an intimate knowledge of pain,'' Franck writes. ``I have also learned that catastrophic experiences can be a catalyst for growth.'' Although Franck's prose is stiff, she writes effectively about how people develop the strength to resume their lives after tragedy strikes. (Jan.)