While clearing out Elena’s art studio, Kal finds a drawer packed with postcards, each bearing an identical one-line message from a Canadian gallery owner named Susannah Gillespie: “Thinking of you.” Who is this woman and what does she hold the key to her ruined relationship with her mother?
Conflicted by her grief and shaken up from recently seeing a covetous text from an old girlfriend on her husband’s cell phone, Kal impulsively sets off with her toddler Finn to Susannah’s isolated home on a remote British Columbian island. A place of killer whales and storms.
Soon Kal quickly realizes she has made a big mistake. The striking and enigmatic Susannah will only share a few scraps of information about Elena. Unbeknownst to her, she discovers that her mother was a pioneering orca researcher—an activist trying to save these powerful and dangerous creatures.
As Kal struggles to piece together her mother’s past and what happened between Elena and Susannah in the 1970s, Susannah’s behavior grows more and more erratic. Most worrying of all, Susannah is becoming increasingly preoccupied with little Finn. Kal’s uneasiness soon proves true and Kal must confront the biggest threat to her family she has ever experienced.
Told in two competing narratives, The Missing One intermixes Kal’s present day journey to with that of her mother’s awakening as an independent woman, scientist, and activist. As these two narratives converge the novel transforms into a white-knuckle thriller where the secrets of the past imperil the lives of the present.
Interweaving local lore of how orcas protect those who travel away from home, and guides them back safely, in The Missing One Lucy Atkins wrestles with the question of how the past influences the present, and who has the right to own one’s history.
Talking about the book HERE.
Read an interview with the author HERE.
Listen to the Virtual Book Lunch of the Book
From parenting advice to psychos & secrets.
Praise for the book:
"Part mystery, part feminist tome, part story of parental love, part animal-rights narrative, The Missing One is like nothing I've read before . . . [a] poetic page turner" ~The Plain Dealer
"A gripping page-turner." ~The Sunday Times
"A moving and suspenseful tale of the secrets a family keeps." ~Rachel Hore, author of A Place of Secrets
"This novel is brilliantly gripping." ~Closer
"Beautifully written and compelling... a wonderful thriller that is also such a strong portrayal of motherhood." ~Sabine Durrant, author of Under Your Skin
"A page-turning and suspenseful tale... I read it in three sittings... a compelling emotional mystery." ~Lucy Clarke, author of Swimming at Night
"Lucy Atkins's engrossing debut immediately immerses the reader in intrigue." ~Publishers Weekly
No comments:
Post a Comment