For Your Reading List  Credit: Hachette Books, Sylvie Rosokoff The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by Emma Copley Eisenberg In June of 1980, a double murder in West Virginia threw the small, isolated Pocahontas County into a state of suspicion and unease that persisted among its residents for years. Two young middle-class women on their way to a peace festival called the Rainbow Gathering were found murdered in a quiet clearing, and the ensuing investigation — which saw a local farmer convicted 13 years later and then released after a serial killer claimed responsibility — made plain the country's general disdain for the Appalachian community, and the assumed violence and crudeness of the people who call it home.
Nearly 30 years later, Emma Copley Eisenberg moved from New York to Pocahontas County to volunteer, and then work, at a camp dedicated to empowering local teenage girls. It's here that she learns about the "Rainbow murders" — and the story plagues her for years. The Third Rainbow Girl is half investigation of the murders and all of the complicated cultural forces surrounding it, and half memoir of her coming-of-age as a queer woman in a county and state that has long been dismissed and misunderstood. It's a potent, fascinating, deeply thoughtful read. Get your copy now. —Arianna Rebolini
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