The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The book's narrator is 14-year-old murder victim Susie Salmon. Raped and killed by her neighbor, Susie ascends to heaven, where she observes how her death has affected those around her. Her father, who suspects the killer's identity, goes crazy with grief over the loss of his first-born, and his inability to do anything about it. Her mother, who never wanted children, withdraws from her family and into an affair. Susie's sister, Lindsey, fears the kids at school will forever define her by Susie's death, and their little brother, Buckley, struggles to understand the meaning of death.
~curled up review

From the Book
When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was before milk carton photos and public service announcements, she tells us; back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed these things didn't happen. 

In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death, and her own adjustment to the strange new place she finds herself. (It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swingset.) 

With love, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie watches her family as they cope with their grief -- her father embarks on a search for the killer, her sister undertakes a feat of amazing daring, her little brother builds a fort in her honor -- and begin the difficult process of healing. -excerpt from the book

Lucky
When Sebold, the author of the current bestseller The Lovely Bones, was a college freshman at Syracuse University, she was attacked and raped on the last night of school, forced onto the ground in a tunnel "among the dead leaves and broken beer bottles." In a ham-handed attempt to mollify her, a policeman later told her that a young woman had been murdered there and, by comparison, Sebold should consider herself lucky. That dubious "luck" is the focus of this fiercely observed memoir about how an incident of such profound violence can change the course of one's life. Sebold launches her memoir headlong into the rape itself, laying out its visceral physical as well as mental violence, and from there spins a narrative of her life before and after the incident, weaving memories of parental alcoholism together with her post-rape addiction to heroin. In the midst of each wrenching episode, from the initial attack to the ensuing courtroom drama, Sebold's wit is as powerful as her searing candor, as she describes her emotional denial, her addiction and even the rape (her first "real" sexual experience). She skillfully captures evocative moments, such as, during her girlhood, luring one of her family's basset hounds onto a blue silk sofa (strictly off-limits to both kids and pets) to nettle her father. Addressing rape as a larger social issue, Sebold's account reveals that there are clear emotional boundaries between those who have been victims of violence and those who have not, though the author attempts to blur these lines as much as possible to show that violence touches many more lives than solely the victim's. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.