Eighteen years ago, high school senior Karen Hurwitz went to bed for the last time in her Squirrel Hill home, seemingly safe. Two hours later, her parents, startled by noise, walked into the back yard to find their only child lying on her back between the bushes.

Dr. Dennis Hurwitz, a prominent plastic surgeon, let out a primal wail before trying in vain to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. "My baby's gone," he screamed in the dark.

The city sunk into mourning after the Oct. 27, 1989, stabbing, a crime as savage as it was shocking. The case became known nationally as the "Clockwork Orange" murder after Karen's troubled high school friend Michaele "Mick" Anderson confessed to stabbing her with a Samurai sword, initially claiming he was emulating the Stanley Kubrick movie.

Over the years, the murder stuck with Squirrel Hill writer Robert Mendelson, who became a father to a baby girl just a few months before Dr. Hurwitz lost his 17-year-old daughter.

Mr. Mendelson didn't know Dr. Hurwitz or his wife, Linda, who was director of the Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh. But whenever he would see them on the streets or read about them in the newspaper, he would wonder how they could soldier on after suffering such a shattering loss.

Mr. Mendelson spent a year and half trying to answer that question with his new book, "The Chase for Beauty," which hits bookstores next Monday. The book re-creates the night of the murder and the events that led Mr. Anderson, a troubled young man who had been kicked out of his house, to visit Karen, a sensitive friend with loving parents and a bright future.

But only about a third of Mendelson's book is about the Hurwitz murder. It also devotes many pages to Dr. Hurwitz's successful plastic surgery practice and the innovation that brought him TV fame -- the Total Body Lift, a procedure that removes the sagging skin from patients who have undergone gastric bypass surgery. In addition, it details a medical malpractice lawsuit that cost him dearly.

Mr. Mendelson, 51, the editor of Carnegie Mellon University's Today magazine, says he didn't want to write a made-for-TV-movie script about just the murder, but rather a tale of survival. He says the title "The Chase for Beauty" has many layers.

"How do you find beauty in life when you go to your own back yard and you are holding your daughter in your arms, and she is dead?" Mr. Mendelson asks. "What beauty can there be in a world like that? Yet Dr. Hurwitz was able to continue in his personal chase for beauty as well as a professional chase for beauty" in reconstructing faces.

"You keep on living. It may not be what you thought it would be when you were newlyweds. There is still joy and beauty in life."

Although reams were written about the murder at the time, Mr. Mendelson uncovered some eerie premonitions, including a gypsy who tells Mrs. Hurwitz that a catastrophic event would happen to her in early 40s and that she was going to have twins. Also, as a young girl Karen is spooked walking along the Avenue of the Dead in Mexico City and having visions that she would die early.

The book also explores the notion of faith, as Dr. Hurwitz's two siblings react so differently to the murder of their niece.

His brother, Shimon, an orthodox Jewish rabbi who had moved to Israel, tells his brother he is being punished for not leading an observant life, according to the book. His younger sister, Marilyn, loses faith in God because of the tragedy. "Then you have Dennis in the middle of this, trying to make sense," Mendelson said.

Mr. Mendelson spent five days interviewing Mr. Anderson, who is serving a life sentence at Fayette County Prison. He was shocked at how personable he was.

"You think you are going to see Anthony Hopkins from 'Silence of the Lambs.' ... But he is a bright, personable, charming, good-looking person to this day and he has been incarcerated for going on nearly 20 years. ... It is not surprising that Karen was very good friends with him. He was very nice in outward appearance."

Mr. Mendelson said Mr. Anderson never said why he attacked Karen -- except to hint that he was raging over a tough home life. Police speculated that he was jealous over his friends' promising lives.

"He had been in a group of students that had bright futures. All were going to college. All the people he was hanging out with were excited about the next phase of their lives," Mr. Mendelson said. "But his grades had flat-lined. His mom had thrown him out of the house. He had no money. He wasn't going to graduate. In his eyes, he had no future."

On the fateful night, Mr. Anderson called Karen on her private line that rang in her bedroom and told her he needed to talk to her right away. She slipped out of the house while her parents slept.

Three months after losing their daughter, the Hurwitz family adopted a baby, and soon after another baby -- and the book shows how those adoptions were second-guessed by some friends and relatives.

Dr. Hurwitz, who had no editorial input on the book published by Morgan James, said he can't bear to read the section of the book about his daughter's murder.

Also painful is the section about a malpractice suit he lost after performing surgery on a child with a facial deformity.

But overall Dr. Hurwitz likes the book.

"The story has a beginning, a long middle and after a lot of travail and anguish, an ending that is going in the right direction."