Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod

By Maria Flook

A literary investigation by "one of the most powerful American writers at work today" [Annie Proulx] of a story that riveted the nation: how an accomplished, world-traveled fashion writer who had retreated to a simpler life as a single mother on Cape Cod became the victim of a brutal, still-unsolved murder.

On the surface, Christa Worthington’s life had the appearance of privilege and comfort. She was the granddaughter of prominent New Yorkers. Her sparkling journalism earned the fashion world’s respect. But she had turned her back on a glamorous career and begun living in the remote Cape Cod town where she had summered as a child. When she was found murdered in Truro, Massachusetts, just after New Year’s Day in 2002, her toddler daughter clinging to her side, her violent death brought to the surface the many unspoken mysteries of her life.

Invisible Eden is the deeply felt story of a career woman's attempt to start over and reinvent her life away from the fashion circles of New York and Paris only to have an out-of-wedlock child with a local fisherman, forge a life as a single mother, and meet a violent end. Brilliantly portraying Christa’s hunger for belonging and her struggle for survival as a first-time mother, Flook searingly evokes her search for a safe haven, her many tumultuous relationships, and the evidence linking family, strangers, lovers, suspects, and innocents to the tragedy that both shocked a seaside town on Cape Cod and horrified the nation. Flook intricately maps Christa's charged life before her death and follows the first year of the murder investigation with the help of the district attorney who is in an election battle even as he searches for the killer. At the same time, Invisible Eden captures the Cape's haunted landscape, class stratifications, and never-ending battles between its weathy summer residents and its hardscrabble working families who together form a backdrop for a powerful chronicle of love and murder. An edgy and compelling portrait of a woman's tragic journey, Invisible Eden is a mesmerizing true story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 24, 2003
• ISBN: 9780767916462

Reviews for Invisible Eden

[jbarr5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod by Maria Flook Christa Worthington, famous fashion writer that lives in Truro, MA on the cape and about her life and her work.Love the talk of the coast and washashores, lobstering on the island and living year round on the cape.The story is about the murder and gives you many options as to who it might have been. She was unmarried and had a boyfriend but she alsohas a past in town as well. Love the history of the place, never knew it all and lives lost on the seas of those who had fished from there.I don't recall that she had left a daughter behind either, it was just a sad story on the news and I did follow who did it...Liked the eye disease discussions. I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

[victorianrose869 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

August 15, 2003Invisible Eden: Murder on Cape CodMaria FlookThe murder of Christa Worthington, a well-born fashion writer who was found murdered in her Cape Cod house, with her daughter beside her. Authorities still don’t know who killed her. Very well done. Flook is a little too in love with her own writing, reveling in all the unusual words and turns of phrase she uses, but all the detail is great. She didn’t glamorize Worthington too much, which is honest because you really can’t help but despise her in a way. She was astonishingly selfish, both before and after she had the kid. What a disaster with men, too. She didn’t seem a likable person at all, and there’s a part of me that says she reaped what she sowed. That’s probably unfair, but not entirely, I don’t think. I wonder if they’ll ever arrest anyone.(update: they did arrest and convict someone a few years later - no one anyone had even suspected. A plumber or workman of some kind, not connected to her at all)

[jcbook_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was written before we knew "who did it" (via DNA); so there is speculation throughout concerning the married father of Christa's only child Ava, as well as her ex-boyfriend Tom & many others (including her father's girlfriend)! I thought Christa's story had striking similarities to Beth Lochtefeld's - Both women were in their 40s and left behind careers in New York to settle down on the Cape/islands to (possibly) start families, and then were murdered. Had these two women known each other, I think they would have been good friends. Note - The trial for Christa Worthington's murder will soon start and will also be televised on Court TV (with another book to be written about the case by Peter Manso).