Let's talk about Kim. When she talked to her friends, there was a smile in her voice, as if she was anticipating the moment when they would burst out laughing. She liked to say deadpan when you least expected it. She had a childlike, goofy air about her, always giggling. She was never underestimated or underestimated by anyone when it came to gender equality and foreign affairs, two subjects she loved dearly. Kim was kind, sharp, and very loving.

Let me explain how over 100,000 news articles describe Kim: as a 30-year-old journalist from Sweden who was brutally murdered by a Danish inventor. Technically, they are correct. But the way Kim died is merely a footnote to the great story that is her life. It is that story that her parents, Joachim and Ingrid Wall, recall in Voices of Silence: the Life of Journalist Kim Wall. (Opens in a new tab) In this book, written by two reporters who put themselves at the center of the biggest crime story in Europe in 2017, her parents attempt to recover the story about Kim, a born storyteller who was destined to write headlines, not make them.

On August 10, 2017, Kim was working on a feature that would tell the "undercurrent of rebellion" that she had begun to excel at. On that submarine, in the Baltic Sea with an inventor, Kim was murdered. The story of the missing journalist made international news when divers discovered parts of Kim's body scattered in the sea, and five months later, when the inventor, Peter Madsen, was brought to trial (and found guilty of murder, sexual assault, and indecent handling of a corpse), the tragic every twist and turn became front-page news.

Three years have passed since Joachim and Ingrid's daughter was taken from them and the details of her murder were broadcast around the world. They decided that Kim's legacy would not reflect the moment of her death, but the persona of Kim that her family, friends, sources, and readers knew - "a force so vibrant that it always felt good just to be around her," as her friend Alexis Okeowo wrote in The New Yorker magazine determined to reflect that.

I met Kim in 2012, the year we both moved to New York City for graduate school. Better journalists than I have written about her technical prowess and how she is positioned at the pinnacle of a genre that is building itself, but I think more about her kindness than anything else. She introduced herself to me shyly at a party, and within an hour she had registered "Kim Bff" on my cell phone. She brought me chicken soup when I had a cold and literally set up a desk and chair for me when I didn't want to work alone. I remember her deadpan telling me that Icelandic children are taught to assemble IKEA furniture in the first grade. I remember her giggling with glee when I believed her.

"This book is our way of telling the world what kind of person Kim was.

The Voice of Silence is a tapestry of past and present, a joyful record of a life well lived, but also a family reckoning with the disappearance of that life. It follows Kim as she flies from London to Cuba, New York to Haiti, and Beijing to Sri Lanka, gathering stories, bylines, and beloved friends. We also follow the hours, days, and weeks after Ingrid and Joachim wake up to the news that their daughter is missing and learn on television that a stranger has been charged with her murder. Ingrid and Joachim witnessed Madsen's trial every day. According to A Silenced Voice, they were even asked not to walk directly past Madsen because it "upset" her. Instead, like Jason Greene's Once More We Saw Stars (opens in new tab), A Silenced Voice, Greene's tribute to his lost daughter, reveals the light that can and perhaps must be found in grief can and perhaps must be found in grief.

"It would have been impossible to stay upright and alive," Ingrid writes of the months following Kim's death.

"At the same time, they were six months in which we experienced so much love and warmth that did not exist in our consciousness before the tragedy.

I asked Ingrid about how she and Joachim chose love and empathy over hate and anger, both for the book and for life. 'We decided early on that hate had no place in our hearts. Falling into that dark pit would make us losers again."

Another way Ingrid and Joachim found meaning: the Kim Wall Memorial Fund. A collaboration with the International Women's Media Foundation, which Kim admires, the fund awards grants annually to women journalists who "have Kim's sense of adventure" while "going out into the world and confronting life," as Kim did. The fund has awarded grants worth $30,000 over three years. Each spring, Kim's friends and family gather at a warm Brooklyn bar on her birthday to meet the year's grant recipients. There are speeches, toasts, and lots of hugs. Kim was a world-class hugger.

A Silenced Voice, translated by Kathy Salampa, is available now.

A version of this piece appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Marie Claire.