Morgenroth, Kate 1972–

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Morgenroth, Kate 1972–

PERSONAL: Born January 17, 1972, in NY; daughter of William (a civil engineer) and Elizabeth (a librarian; maiden name, Hayes) Morgenroth. Education: Princeton University, B.A., 1994.

ADDRESSES: Office—c/o Author Mail, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Worked as an English teacher in China; HarperCollins (publisher), New York, NY, worked as marketing assistant and member of editorial staff.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Authors League of America.

AWARDS, HONORS: Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination, young adult fiction category, Mystery Writers of America, 2005, for Jude.

WRITINGS:

Kill Me First (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.

Saved (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

Jude (novel), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Echo (tentative title), a young adult novel, publication by Simon & Schuster (New York, NY) expected in 2007.

SIDELIGHTS: Kate Morgenroth studied creative writing at Princeton University. After graduation, she traveled to China to teach English for a year and then was employed as a marketing assistant by HarperCollins in New York City. Her first novel was published by HarperCollins.

In Kill Me First, the protagonist, Sarah Shepherd, is a fifty-year-old woman who causes an automobile accident that results in the death of her husband and a teen couple. Sarah has no family to help her recover from her injuries, so she moves into a nursing home. A gang of mercenaries led by a terrorist named Merec invades the home and kills all but eight people. An Economist reviewer called Merec "possibly the most intellectual murderer since Hannibal Lecter." Merec proceeds to videotape the capture and subsequent action as part of what he considers his study of human nature. He pairs up the survivors and asks each pair to choose which of them he should kill. Each person tells Merec to kill his partner, but when he gets to Sarah, she says, "kill me first." Impressed by Sarah's courage, Merec spares her and her partner but slaughters everyone else. Sarah's partner, Rose, is then dispatched to the media carrying the videotape. Sarah and Merec are attracted to each other, and embark on a complicated and bizarre relationship of codependency and mind games. An intelligence agent and a detective take up the nursing home murder case, determined to rescue the final survivor. The climax of the story takes place on live television in St. Patrick's cathedral in New York City.

Maryanne Vollers wrote in the New York Time Book Review that Sarah "is the book's most incomprehensible character. After a few weeks of captivity,… Sarah discovers her inner warrior. But this is no Patty Hearst story (despite the novel's tantalizing epigraph). There is no political or class struggle to place the characters in context, no real moral choices to examine." Acknowledging that the novel raises some "thought-provoking" questions, Vollers concluded that "they never amount to a cohesive moral theme." A Publishers Weekly reviewer also found parts of the book hard to believe, but concluded that Kill Me First is "a clever and unusual thriller, unflinching in its violence, economic in its plotting, and unpredictable in its psychological developments." Library Journal reviewer Rebecca House Stankowski called Kill Me First an "intelligent thriller" and a "refreshing first novel." In the Economist, the novel was described by a reviewer as a "wholly fresh and absorbing work" that creates a "sort of clinical case study of a killer."

Saved is another story of a woman whose unintentional actions lead to the death of someone else, who subse-quently finds herself in unfamiliar circumstances in a codependent relationship with an unsavory companion, and reacts to events in unpredictable ways. In this case, the woman is Alaskan Coast Guard pilot Ellie Somers; the accident is a helicopter chase that kills a colleague; the circumstances involve a gambling junket to Las Vegas; and the companion is a decadent Casanova seemingly bent on destroying the both of them. Critics noted that Somers herself is far from perfect: a risk-taker who only acknowledges partial responsibility for her acts—but they nonetheless responded favorably to the story. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the novel "an unusual and effective thriller." A Kirkus Reviews contributor claimed that Morgenroth "proves again that she knows how to weave a spell."

Jude is a thriller intended for the young adult audience—full of plots, secrets, twists, and turns. Teenager Jude survives a host of assaults, from being kidnapped by his birth father as a baby to the loss of that drugdealer father in a homicide, betrayal by his birthmother's boyfriend, and a brutal prison sentence for a crime he did no commit. Several critics reported positively on the novel, though a Publishers Weekly contributor mentioned a "cockamamie plot" with an "overly dramatic back story." Booklist critic Hazel Rochman found the story "compelling" and the dialogue "pitch-perfect," describing the theme as one of "fear, shame, anger, and search for home." Kliatt reviewer Paula Rohrlick predicted that mature teen readers likely "will be riveted by the prison scenes and by Jude's tragic situation." School Library Journal contributor Johanna Lewis recommended Jude even to reluctant readers: "The plot is tight, deliberately paced, and full of delicious twists."

As Morgenroth explained to US1 Newspaper interviewer Tricia Fagan: "I'm fascinated by the unpredictability of human beings. In a given situation, you never know how you're going to react. You'd like to think that you'd be the hero … But I think the truth is that you never really know what's going to happen when your survival instincts kick in."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Book, September-October, 2002, Susan Tekulve, review of Saved, p. 84.

Booklist, November 15, 2004, Hazel Rochman, review of Jude, p. 584; May 1, 2005, Gillian Engberg, review of Jude, p. 1543.

Economist, June 19, 1999, review of Kill Me First, p. 4.

Entertainment Weekly, May 28, 1999, "The Week," p. 138.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 1999, review of Kill Me First, p. 477; June 15, 2002, review of Saved, p. 833; September 15, 2004, review of Jude, p. 916.

Kliatt, November, 2004, Paula Rohrlick, review of Jude, p. 10.

Library Journal, March 15, 1999, Rebecca House Stankowski, review of Kill Me First, p. 110; October 1, 1999, review of Kill Me First, p. 52; October 15, 1999, Barbara Valle, review of Kill Me First, p. 122.

New York Times Book Review, September 5, 1999, Maryanne Vollers, review of Kill Me First, p. 15; September 8, 2002, Marilyn Stasio, review of Saved, p. 24.

Publishers Weekly, March 1, 1999, review of Kill Me First, p. 58; July 29, 2002, review of Saved, p. 56; November 22, 2004, review of Jude, p. 60.

School Library Journal, November, 2004, Johanna Lewis, review of Jude, p. 150.

Voice of Youth Advocates, December, 2004, review of Jude, p. 386.

Washington Post Book World, August 8, 1999, review of Kill Me First, p. 4.