Is The Lovely Bones based on a true story?

Below is a
link to a biographical entry written about . In short, yes, was based on
true life events: Sebold was brutally raped in a tunnel while she was in college. Once she
reported the crime, the police told her of another rape that had happened in the same tunnel in
which the victim had been dismembered. She was lucky to be alive, but, understandably, had
difficulty moving past this traumatic event. The Lovely Bones was most
likely an opportunity for Sebold to at least attempt to make peace with herself regarding this
incident. Writing the novel, reliving these events probably provided some release for these pent
up emotions. 

Also written in her biography is the tension that she often
felt with her parents, her mother in particular. It's easy to see that there were similar issues
with the surviving daughter and the mother in The Lovely Bones as well.
Specifically, Sebold's mother suffered from anxiety and alcoholism, so the children did not live
with her; Abigail Salmon (mother in the novel) eventually abandons her family because she cannot
deal with the death of her daughter. 

While the story is clearly
fictionalized, Sebold used actual events, and probably some of her own emotions, for the basis
of this novel.