Set in working-class Niagara Falls, New York, a young widow and her 12-year old daughter decide to take a shortcut home through a wooded area after a 4th of July party. But there's a gang of drunken young men hanging out, high on meth and looking for trouble. What follows is awful. The woman is left unconscious and bleeding but her young daughter manages to escape and get help. It seems like an open and shut case. But even though most of men are arrested, the town turns on the woman. "She had it coming," is the way they look at it.Much of the book is written from the point of view of the 12-year old girl. Our heart goes out to her as she realizes that her childhood ended on that awful night. What follows is a nightmare as her schoolmates taunt her and threaten her mother. There's a policeman, however, who was the first to discover the victims. As he watches the court system humiliate the woman and her daughter, he is enraged enough to take justice into his own hands.This book is a mere 154 small pages and is more a novella than a novel. It packs a terrific punch though. From the very first sentence, I was captivated, and read it at a breathless pace and cringed to hear about the horrors of the justice system for rape victims. This is especially true in a small town where everybody knows everybody else and the families of the rapists turn against the victim.Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific writer and, through the years, I have enjoyed many of her novels. I look forward to reading many more.