Book SYNOPSIS

The Officer’s Daughter: A Memoir of Family and Forgiveness
Elle Johnson. Harper, $27.99 (224p) ISBN SBN 978-0-06-301132-8

When Elle Johnson was 16 years old, her cousin Karen, also 16, had her face blown off at point blank range in a robbery gone wrong at the Burger King in the Bronx where she was working. Elle comes from a family of black law enforcement officers. Her uncle, Karen's dad, was a homicide detective. Her father was a parole officer. Her aunt a probation officer. The aftermath of Karen's murder, the cross-country manhunt spearheaded by the NYPD and the FBI to find the killers, and the subsequent trials and media circus, marked the defining end of Elle's childhood innocence.

Thirty years later, living in Los Angeles, writing for various television shows (including several police procedurals), Elle receives an email from Karen's older brother notifying her that one of the killers is up for parole. Asked to write a letter encouraging the parole board not to set him free Elle realizes that before she can write a letter condemning a man she's never met, she must also investigate the hard truths of her own past:  family who never really spoke of the devastating effect the murder of her young cousin had on any of them, with secrets of their own, and a complicated father she never truly understood.

The Officer's Daughter is the story of a family, a terrible tragedy, and the power--and ultimately the freedom-of forgiveness.

About the author

Raised in Hollis, Queens and educated at Harvard, Elle moved out to LA and got her first writing gig on the critically acclaimed drama HOMICIDE, based on David Simon’s book. Her credits include cop shows LAW & ORDER, CSI:MIAMI, THE GLADES, and SAVING GRACE as well as character-driven series ANY DAY NOW, THE FOSTERS, and GHOST WHISPERER. She was Executive Producer and co-showrunner on the Netflix limited series SELF MADE: INSPIRED BY THE LIFE OF MADAM CJ WALKER starring Octavia Spencer, who was nominated for an Emmy in the lead role. The show also won the 2021 N.A.A.C.P. Image Award for best limited series. Most recently Elle was an Executive Producer on the Amazon Prime series BOSCH. Her other adventures run the gamut from riding a bicycle across country for charity to working in development as a presidential intern at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. This is her first book.