First published 2025
Clara Harrington is eight years old when her mother Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham vanishes off the South Carolina coast in 1927. Bronwyn had shocked the literary world by writing a bestselling novel in her own invented language at age twelve. Her disappearance leaves behind Clara, her father, and the mystery of an untranslated sequel. Twenty-five years later, Clara works as an illustrator and raises her daughter Wynnie. A stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London, claiming he has found a handwritten dictionary of her mother's lost language. Clara travels to England with Wynnie to investigate. They arrive during London's deadly Great Smog of 1952, which threatens Wynnie's asthmatic condition. The family escapes to the Lake District with Charlie, where Clara must finally confront the truth about her mother's disappearance and decode the story Bronwyn left behind.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, mystery, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: England, Lake District, London, South Carolina
Period: 1927, 1952
352 pages · Hardcover · Atria Books