What do Andrea and Tracy have in common in the novel, The Trapped Girl?

Tracy's younger sister was murdered when the girls were young adults. The murder has had a strong impact on Tracy's life. She is always focused on the victim and the victim's family because of that experience. The experience also has negative effects, including her tendency to take cases seriously, especially when the victims are young women with any similarities to Tracy's sister. At one point, Tracy's supervisor warns her to stop making everything so personal and urges her to consider that the simplest answer is sometimes the correct one. Tracy is intelligent and clever, and she sometimes uses instructions – including this one – to justify her actions.

Andrea is similar to Tracy in that she suffered tragedy early in her life. Her parents were killed in a car wreck. Andrea was trapped in the car with their bodies for hours. She then went to live with her aunt and uncle, and her uncle molested her. This prompted Child Protective Services to place Andrea in the foster system until her aunt created a safe place for Andrea to live. Because of these early traumas, the psychiatrist who treated Andrea says it is very possible that Andrea suffered a break with reality and that she could have gone so far as to commit murder in this state.