The story starts on a brutally gorgeous June day in the small town of Monroe, Massachusetts. Ethan and Jorie, the perfect, beautiful couple, have been married for 13 years, and they're still very much in love. Ethan is handsome, reliable and a pillar of the community. But 13 years ago, far away in Maryland, he committed a brutal rape and murder. A young girl's phone call exposes him, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them again; as nothing could ever be the same for that other young girl who was raped all those years ago, or for her family. Jorie's best friend Charlotte has breast cancer. Her cancer is cut out and treated, and she looks set to survive. Whereas the cancer that has eaten away invisibly at a marriage, a family and a community may not kill but it destroys just as insidiously. This is a powerful, disturbing novel about the dark shadows in ordinary lives, about the ripples that carry on indefinitely from a violent act. And the blue diary of the title belonged to the dead girl...As in all Hoffman's novels, all the characters come alive, each with their own vibrant personalitites and concerns, in a story which is as powerfully gripping as any by Anita Shreve or Nicci French.