It begins with a phone call. Fifteen years ago Nora Watts gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. Now Bonnie has vanished and when the police don't seem to care, her desperate parents turn to Nora as a last resort.
Nora knows only too well what happens to missing girls, especially when they aren't blonde or white enough. Despite herself, she sets out to find the daughter she's never known protected only by her instincts and a freakish ability to detect truth from lies.
As she plunges into her own dark past, Nora uncovers a violent conspiracy on a grand scale that will take her from the rain-soaked streets of Vancouver, to the icy mountains of the Canadian wilderness, and ultimately to a remote island where she will face her most terrifying demon. All to save a girl she wishes had never been born.
Nora Watts is about to discover that you never really put your past behind you.
The call comes in just after five in the morning. I am immediately on guard because everyone knows that nothing good ever happens before seven. I've never heard the name Everett Walsh before, but according to him I may know something about a missing girl.
Troubled, misunderstood, and with more than enough problems of her own, Nora doesn't want to get involved. But then she sees the photograph. A girl, a teenager, with her eyes. How can she turn her back on her?
But going in search of her daughter brings Nora into contact with a past that she would rather forget . . . As she begins to investigate, she uncovers a dangerous conspiracy and embarks on a harrowing journey of deception and violence that takes her from the rainy streets of Vancouver to the snow-capped mountains of the Canadian wilderness and, finally, to the island where she will face her greatest demon: a shadowy figure from her own dark past. All to save a girl she wishes had never been born.
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Suspenseful,
atmospheric and often deeply moving . . .
one of the most complicated and fascinating protagonists I've come across in a long time. I'd follow Nora Watts (and her dog) anywhere.'
