At the start of INVISIBLE CITY, Rebekah Roberts, a stringer for the New York Tribune, is pulled from a mundane story about the bust of a brothel in the rear of an Internet café. Instead, she is assigned to investigate breaking news involving the discovery of the body of an unidentified naked woman in a local scrap yard. She has no idea that she's about to come face to face with a past about which she knows little and has tried hard to put far behind her, though it's seldom far from her mind.

The Smith Street Scrap Yard, where the body was found clasped in and dangling from the jaws of an excavator, is located in Borough Park, a Brooklyn neighborhood that's home to a tight-knit community of Hasidic Jews who work hard to dissociate themselves from the outside world. Thus, when crime strikes the area, the New York Police Department takes a backseat and allows the insular Jewish community to handle its own problems. Getting anyone to talk to her about the story is going to be difficult, if not impossible, in this congregation of ultra-Orthodox observers.

"[Dahl] paints a vivid picture of the 22-year-old woman who's willing to take on New York City to carve out the career she's always dreamed of and face the demons from the past that sometimes threaten to overtake her heart, mind and body."

Fortunately, though, Rebekah has a secret that just might gain her entry into the Jewish community. Her mother, Aviva Kagan, hailed from Borough Park herself. Though she left Rebekah and Rebekah's Christian father behind in Orlando, Florida, just months after giving birth to Rebekah to return home, that makes Rebekah Jewish by descent. As a struggling young reporter eager to make a name for herself, she will use whatever means she can to learn who beat the mother of four, Rivka Mendelssohn, and dumped her body like yesterday's trash.

Early in her investigation, Rebekah encounters Saul Katz, an old friend of her father and mother, who has a stake in the outcome. Saul proves to be a friend, introducing Rebekah to those who may be willing to add information to the few sketchy details she's been able to obtain about Rivka. As Rebekah digs deeper, she finds that Rivka was questioning her faith and possibly looking for a way to leave behind Jewish orthodoxy and the Borough Park neighborhood without losing the children she loved dearly to her affluent husband, who wielded considerable power.

In the process of her investigative reporting, Rebekah can't help but wonder whatever happened to her mother and spend time imagining the life she lived subjected to the restrictive rules and regulations that must have governed her days in Borough Park. Can Rebekah remain impartial and report the most important story of her short career, or will she lose her perspective as she's haunted by ghosts from the past?

INVISIBLE CITY is the debut novel of Julia Dahl, who makes an impressive showing when she introduces us to her quirky main character. She paints a vivid picture of the 22-year-old woman who's willing to take on New York City to carve out the career she's always dreamed of and face the demons from the past that sometimes threaten to overtake her heart, mind and body.