'A gifted storyteller' Maggie Shipstead

'Everything I want in a book ... with the perfect conclusion I never saw coming' Stacy Willingham

Life has forced Kate back to her childhood home in the Carolina marshes, once a half-sunk nowhere, now a beauty spot where the houses sell for millions.

But it's Kate who decides she can't look away from a local murder: a girl found dead in a hunting blind.

It's Kate who can't bear the unresolved ending. Who can't stay out of the lead detective's way. Who can't stop connecting the dots between the dead girl and her own teenage years here. That time with Kirby, the high school boyfriend whose death she has never fully understood.

Two mysteries, decades apart. And the deeper Kate wades into the dead girl's story, the more she disturbs her own. There are the answers you never stop searching for. And the truths you can't see at all.

Exquisitely atmospheric, twisting and beautiful, this marshland literary mystery is perfect for readers of The God of the Woods, The Paper Palace, Where the Crawdads Sing or All the Colours of the Dark.

PRAISE FOR LYDIA FITZPATRICK

'A cross-cultural coming-of-age story that breaks your heart in the best way' Maggie Shipstead, author of Great Circle

'As delicious as it is dazzling - a mystery I was tempted to read in one sitting ... Brilliantly conceived and exquisitely observed' Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists

'This intricate, capacious, startlingly inventive novel is so vivid, and rings so true, that its characters have taken up permanent residence in my imagination' R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

'This supple, sparkling novel is really about tender souls navigating unfamiliar terrain and human bonds warm enough to thaw snowbanks' Adam Johnson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Orphan Master's Son

'Utterly brilliant and completely captivating ... one of the most propulsive, un-put-downable literary novels I've read in ages' Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

'The bonds of family and homeland new and old are tested in this sexy and pensive thriller' Observer

'It's a heartbreaking read, and one I struggled to put down' Buzzfeed