Girl With A Past, a debut mystery novel by Sherri Leigh James, tells the story of two Cal co-eds separated by 40 years whose lives become murderously intertwined.
UC Berkeley in 1969 could be a murderous place for a Cal co-ed. Lexi Johnson thought tear gas on campus was all she had to fear the day she was murdered.
In 2008, Alexandra Johnson looks into the 1969 unsolved murder of her father's best friend and fellow Cal student. Her interest in Lexi's murder triggers attempts on her own life forcing her to solve the cold case homicide in order to protect herself and her family. Multiple shootings and her mother's kidnapping have Alexandra racing to find the persons threatening her and her family.
When Alexandra is shot at on campus, she realizes she may know more about the earlier serial shootings than anyone would suspect. Some clues are found in the hippie era including the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco, the People's Park protests in Berkeley, and the hedonist counterculture in Big Sur.
Alexandra discovers that she has more to do with the co-ed in from 1969 than she could ever have imagined. Transcendental twists in her dangerous hunt for the serial killer reveal that she is the Girl With A Past.
Armed with her new understanding of the case, Alexandra and her brother, Steven, search from Marin to Tahoe for who wants to kill Alexandra––and why?
Alexandra and Steven's questions, and hints that they know more that they should, make their parents' old college friends, now pillars of the community, nervous that their secrets will be revealed. Not only might their successful lives be ruined––they could be ended, thanks to the Girl With A Past.