TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER The Bookworm Sez Advertisement

They say that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

For instance, staying out past curfew when you're 16 equals being grounded. Driving fast and getting caught means loss of license. Innocent things, the repercussions of which last only a short time.

But some events can resonate for decades. Some events can swipe at entire towns and be felt generations later. In the new book "Fall," by Ron Franscell, you'll read about one such horrific event and its aftermath.

Then as now in a small town, sending your child to the store for a few minor items is nothing extraordinary. So when 18-year-old Becky Thomson and her 11-year-old sister, Amy Burridge, went to fetch a few things for their mother, none of them knew that their lives would change that night.

There was a problem with the car in the store's parking lot. The tire was flat and Becky didn't have a spare, but two nice men in a white Impala said they'd help. The men offered to deliver the girls home or maybe fix the tire. Instead, they drove around their Casper, Wyo., town, one of the men terrorizing the girls, the other man silent. They then drove the girls to a bridge on the outside of town.

There, they threw little Amy off the bridge to her death, a 110 feet into churning water. Becky was raped and likewise thrown into the river.

They intended for Becky to die. But she didn't.

When Becky, grievously injured and with wounds inside and out, was asked to describe the men, authorities knew instantly who they were. Jerry Jenkins and Ron Kennedy both were well-known to police. They were arrested within a short time and were quickly tried and sentenced to death under Wyoming law.

But that's not the end of the story.

Jenkins' and Kennedy's sentences were later changed to life imprisonment. Both seemed strangely comfortable in prison society, and Kennedy enjoyed some outrageous allowances while an inmate.

Meanwhile, Becky Thomson struggled with her memories and tried to drown them in a bottle. She married and had a child. She held a series of jobs. But life for her -- and for her family and, the people who knew her -- was never quite as secure as it had been before that night in the fall of 1973.

Are you in the habit of taking a book to bed with you to read? Here's fair warning: Don't take this one. Read it in broad daylight, because "Fall" is going to chill you like no other true crime book you've ever read.

Author Ron Franscell mixes his own memories of Becky and Amy with re-creations of the crime, the trial and the lives of those who were affected in almost every way by that terrible night.

Lock your doors, make sure your kids are safe in bed, and pick up this horrifyingly absorbing memoir. If you're a true crime fan, this book will undoubtedly cause a reaction: goosebumps.

"Fall," by Ron Franscell, New Horizon Press, $24.95, 272 pages.