Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge
I just closed the cover on Rebecca Godfrey’s latest novel, Under the Bridge. It’s the chilling true story of the murder of fourteen year old Reena Virk, in Victoria, B.C.
Godfrey has taken this shocking moment in Canadian history and turned it into a true crime book that reads like an absorbing work of fiction. Under the Bridge is an extraordinary look into suburban teen culture and what happens when a squabble between children goes horribly amiss.
I spoke with Rebecca on the phone from her home in New York City.
Buy Under the Bridge at amazon.ca chapters.ca
August 7th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
This heartbreaking tale leaves the reader with a sense of outrage at the Canadian social and justice system that should have been monitoring and taking better care of these kids. Teenagers living in group homes left to come and go as they please throughout the day and night while their parents lived a few miles away but could not “handle them”? 14 year old heroin addicts rotting in jail rather than receiving treatment? Minor children continually badgered and interrogated by police while their pleas for legal assistance are continually ignored!
Had the authorities provided Warren G. with the foster home he so desperately needed, this tragedy may have been avoided. The sanctimonious residents of Victoria need not make unflattering comaprisons to the “gangsters of Los Angeles” without taking a long, hard look at their own incompetence and the part it played in this murder. Seems to me that Canada needs a good, old-fashioned American lawsuit for child neglect and endangerment!