First published 2025
It is the winter of 1951. Bernadette Baston steps off a boat onto Elita Island, a remote spit of land in the Pacific Northwest that holds a penitentiary and not much else. She is a child development scholar, and she has been sent to assess a teenage girl named Atalanta, discovered living wild in the woods just outside the prison walls. Atalanta will not speak. Bernadette is certain that silence is not emptiness. The warden wants a fast verdict. The girl's court-appointed guardian gives answers that don't quite add up. A local detective circles the case with questions of his own. Everyone on the island seems to be protecting the same story, and no one will say what it is. The deeper Bernadette digs, the harder it becomes to stay detached. What started as a professional assignment becomes something she cannot put down. Her pursuit of Atalanta's origins puts pressure on everything she has built at home, her marriage, her children, her careful place in a world that does not offer women like her much room to move. Two lives, one mute and one overworked, press up against each other until neither can stay unchanged.
Genres: drama, literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, psychological-thriller, mystery-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intimate, introspective, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: dual-perspective, mystery-box, obsession, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Elita Island, Pacific Northwest
Period: 1951, 1950s
264 pages · Paperback · TriQuarterly
Content warnings: abuse, child-abuse