by John Hart
First published 2016
Elizabeth Black stands as a decorated police officer who saved a young girl from captivity and killed her two abductors in the process. The rescue made her a hero in her small town. But Black carries secrets that could destroy everything she has built. She is not alone in harboring dangerous truths. Other people in her community guard their own hidden knowledge. The remote American landscape holds abandoned places and forgotten people. Small towns struggle with desperation while residents navigate uneasy relationships. Black must confront the consequences of her actions and the weight of what she knows. The truth threatens to unravel not just her career but her entire sense of identity. In a place where derelict buildings mirror broken lives, Black discovers that heroism and guilt often occupy the same space.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, psychological-thriller
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: dark-secrets, unreliable-narrator
Setting: America, Small Towns
Period: Contemporary
432 pages · Hardcover · Hodder & Stoughton
Content warnings: violence