What's done in darkness A novel

Laura McHugh

Book - 2021

"On a hot, hazy summer day, Sarabeth is forced to work her family's farmstand in Arkansas. It was only recently that Sarabeth had a normal teenage life in town, able to see her friends, starting to date--but that was before her parents found God and moved her and her siblings to a farm in the middle of nowhere. Now she has to wear long dresses even in the blistering heat, can't cut her hair, and can't spend time with anyone her age. Sarabeth has become rebellious and wayward, refusing to adapt--then she is taken. Blindfolded and chained to a basement wall, Sarabeth is held captive for weeks by a person she never sees or speaks to, and just when she thinks her life is about to be over, she wakes up along the side of a hig...hway, where she is discovered by a passing motorist. Now an adult, she goes by Sarah, has cut ties with her family entirely, and has made a contented, if solitary life for herself as an adult in St. Louis. That is, until Detective Nick Farrow with the Missouri Highway Patrol Missing Persons calls her, wanting her help to investigate the recent disappearance of a young girl in a case which bears striking similarities to Sarah's own. In this riveting new novel from Laura McHugh, a woman finds that sometimes our attempt to loosen the ties to our past only bind us further. McHugh enthralls with this suspenseful tale of a woman who pulls a real-life Gone Girl"--

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Subjects
Genres
Thrillers (Fiction)
Novels
Published
New York : Random House [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Laura McHugh (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
238 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780399590313
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

In her fourth stand-alone (after The Wolf Wants In, 2019), McHugh delivers a harrowing rural thriller with a Southern gothic feel to it, set deep in the heart of the Ozarks. As her eighteenth birthday draws near, Sarabeth finds that instead of living her dream of community college, her fundamentalist parents are planning to force her into an arranged marriage. When she is subsequently abducted and found a week later alongside a highway in a bloodstained slip with a shorn head, her family's rejection of her provides a chance to start a new life. But it's not much of a life. Sarabeth's horrific ordeal, blindfolded in darkness and silence, has left her empty and paranoid, but she soldiers on, finding some comfort in her work with an animal rescue group. Investigator Nick Farrow asks for her help in an abduction similar to hers, and, after hesitating, she agrees. This is a redemptive and absorbing tale of one victim's courage in confronting her suffocating past. Discerning readers will recognize the truth before Sarabeth does, but it doesn't matter. There are surprising final twists to come.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Sarabeth Shepherd, the narrator of this moving psychological suspense novel from Thriller Award winner McHugh (The Wolf Wants In), is still struggling after being abducted five years earlier at 17 from her family's farm in Wisteria, Ark., when she gets an out-of-the-blue plea for help from Nick Farrow, of the Missouri Highway Patrol's missing persons unit. Even before Nick suggests that finding a 16-year-old girl might uncover information that finally cracks her own abduction, Sarabeth, who now goes by Sarah and works at an animal shelter, knows she would do anything to rescue another girl from an ordeal like hers, blindfolded and chained in a basement for a week before managing to escape. But despite Nick's unexpectedly simpatico support, returning to her own neck of the Ozarks, where her estranged family still lives as part of a patriarchal religious sect, proves even more traumatic for Sarah than anticipated--and dangerous. As incredible as the plot's harrowing twists may seem, any number of true crime accounts testify otherwise. Fortunately, there's a light amid all this darkness--courageous, determined Sarah. Readers will hope to encounter her again. Agent: Sally Wofford-Girand, Union Literary. (June)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

In When Justice Sleeps, Abrams takes a break from her considerable political responsibilities to craft a legal thriller featuring Avery Keene, who clerks for Supreme Court Justice Wynn and takes over the background investigation of a key case when he falls into a coma. In Hairpin Bridge, Adams's No Exit follow-up, Lena Nguyen doesn't believe that estranged twin sister Cambry committed suicide; otherwise, she likely wouldn't have called 911 16 times before her death (100,000-copy first printing). In Hummel's Lesson in Red, follow-up to the Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine pick Still Lives, Maggie Richter faces another artworld mystery. In Edgar-nominated, New York Times best-selling author McCreight's Friends Like These, a bachelor party in the Catskills is a cover for a staged intervention to help one of the guests, but someone ends up dead (75,000-copy first printing). Abducted from her found-religion parents' isolated Arkansas homestead and returned unharmed yet still treated as damaged, teenage Sarabeth gladly makes her exit, but in International Thriller Writer Award winner McHugh's What's Done in Darkness, she gets called back five years later to help with a copycat crime. Following Mangin's nationally best-selling Tangerine, Palace of the Drowned stars flailing British novelist Frankie Croy, who is staying in a friend's vacant Venice palazzo in 1966 while struggling to regain her early writing promise and doesn't quite trust a fan who comes her way (200,000-copy first printing). Having had a huge international best seller with The Silent Patient, Michaelides aims for another winner in his Untitled new work (one-million-copy first printing). Following the New York Times best-selling, Reese Witherspoon-optioned Something in the Water, Steadman returns with The Disappearing Act, about a British actress who realizes that she's the only witness to the disappearance of a woman she auditioned with during Hollywood's harried pilot season.

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Chapter 1 SARAH, NOW Sarabeth. Three syllables, hushed, like a secret whispered in my ear, my skin prickling as though I had felt his breath through the phone. The man was still talking, but it was all static after Sarabeth. No one called me that anymore. It was an old name. A dead name. I had been Sarah for nearly five years, and those who knew my real name never had cause to utter it, because they no longer spoke to me. There was a pause while the man waited for me to respond. "Hello?" he said. "Are you there?" I pressed my free hand flat against the cool metal desktop and tried to anchor myself in the present. My cluttered office at the animal shelter. The brightly colored sticky notes framing my monitor, reminding me of upcoming foster appointments. The mournful wail of a bloodhound in the exam room down the hall. I forced air into my constricted lungs, the stinging scent of bleach and urine filtering in as the kennels were sprayed down. "I'm sorry," I said, my voice snagging in my throat. "I couldn't hear you." "I'm Nick Farrow with the Missouri Highway Patrol, Missing Persons Unit. I need to speak with you about your case." I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry. Why would the Missouri state police be calling me now? I'd been found in Missouri, not far from the Arkansas line, but the Clayton County Sheriff's Department back in Wisteria had been in charge of the case, and after making a mess of it, they'd done their best to bury it and move on. "Did something happen?" I asked. "Has something new come up?" "Not exactly," he said. "Not in regard to your case specifically. But there's a missing person case that bears some resemblance to yours. I'd like to ask you a few questions." "I'm sorry," I said. "It was a long time ago. I've already given all the information I had." I sensed skepticism in his silence and wasn't surprised. I knew it was difficult to believe that I'd been held captive for more than a week yet didn't know who'd taken me or where I'd been. People had their own ideas about what had happened to Sarabeth Shepherd, the seventeen-year-old girl who'd vanished from her family's farm in rural Arkansas and reappeared in a bloodstained slip along Highway 65, bound and blindfolded, with a dubious story about how she ended up there. I thought of that Sarabeth as a different person altogether, the girl from the newspaper headlines. "I understand," Farrow said in a gentle Good Cop voice, his tone implying I am on your side. I knew from experience that if you didn't give Good Cop what he wanted, it was only a matter of time before Bad Cop stepped in. Did you run away, Sarabeth? Did you cause these injuries yourself? Cut off your own hair? Did you make it all up for attention? "I still want to talk to you," Farrow continued. "I know it's been a while, but some things have changed since then." The bloodhound's cries grew louder as Melissa, my boss, led him past my office toward the outdoor runs. The dog twisted and squirmed, fighting the leash. We'd found him tied to the fence when we arrived to open the shelter an hour ago, his ears lumpy with ticks. It was all too common for people to dump animals overnight, to avoid the intake fee or the paperwork or the discomfort of looking someone in the eye while they relinquished a pet. Last August, we'd found a litter of twelve black kittens sealed in a plastic storage tub in the parking lot. All but one had perished in the heat before we got to them. Melissa named the survivor Sunny and bottle-fed her around the clock for days, but she didn't make it. "What's changed?" I asked. "We've got new tools, technologically speaking," he said. "I'm sure you've seen it in the news. Software that can link crimes. Genealogical databases that can help identify criminals from cold cases. There's a chance we could find the person who took you." He dangled that vague possibility as though it would entice me. I had left my old life behind on the farm, like the snakes that shed their skins in the fields, a process necessary for survival. A piece of me was still there in Arkansas, but I was gone. No one in my new life knew who I was, what had happened to me, and I wanted to keep it that way. "You said this was about another case." "Yes," he said. "A sixteen-year-old girl went missing from a small town near the Bootheel. No trace of her since, no sightings, nothing. I'm checking for any possible connection to previous abductions, and I need your help. An hour of your time." "Do you think she might have run away?" There was a sound like paper shuffling. A muted sigh. I wondered if he remembered the news coverage of my case, if he'd been working in missing persons back then. Regardless, he'd have read enough of the file to be aware of the lingering suspicion that I was responsible for my own disappearance. I wasn't the only survivor in recent years to be accused of pulling a real-life Gone Girl, to fail the purity test for girls who come back alive. The sheriff had chuckled when I said I couldn't describe the suspect or the location because I'd been blindfolded the entire time and kept in the dark. Is that right, he said, his shoulders ratcheting up and down as he laughed. Well, ain't that convenient. "We can't rule it out," Farrow said. "But no, I don't think she ran away." I stared at a neon-green Post-it: Helen, Dairy Queen, Worm X. My most prolific volunteer would be arriving soon to get her latest foster puppies dewormed. The Dairy Queen litter. They'd been found in a dumpster behind the restaurant. "What makes you think I can help?" "She has some things in common with you, Sarabeth." "Sarah," I said. "I go by Sarah now." He knew that, no doubt, and used my old name purposefully, in an attempt to dredge up the past, to haul painful memories to the surface, foul and dripping. I thought of my brothers playing at the muddy edge of the farm pond one spring, poking hibernating frogs to wake them. Leave them be! my little sister, Sylvie, had piped. They're dreaming. Sylvie wouldn't be little like I remembered her. She'd be sixteen now, my brothers grown into men. "Sarah," he said, his voice softening. "You might have a valuable piece of information without realizing it. Something that could help us find her. You could bring her home." He stated it with conviction, as though it was a real possibility, but he was wrong. I couldn't save anyone. Five years later, my own survival still seemed tenuous. I'd stopped taking pills for anxiety and insomnia, not because I didn't need them anymore, but because I worried they made me less alert. I had nightmares, the fear so visceral that I felt no relief even when I woke in my own bed, the night-light burning brightly enough to illuminate the familiar landscape of my bedroom. "I wish I could help, I really do." "You can. All I'm asking--" "Look, I'm at work," I said. "It's not a good time." "Wait," he said. "Her name's Abby Donnelly." "I'm sorry, I have to go." "Think about it," he said. "Think about Abby. I'll be in touch." I hung up, chilled by the sweat that had dampened my skin during the brief conversation. I didn't know for sure whether Farrow could compel me to talk to him, but I told myself that he couldn't. I pressed my palms to the desk, breathed in the scent of disinfectant, clamped my tongue between my teeth. You're okay. You're safe. Despite the rituals of reassurance, I felt wobbly, like my bones had gone soft. I kept Sarabeth buried as best I could, but the grave was shallow and easily disturbed. "Hey," Melissa said, pushing the door open with her elbow, an armful of crusty-eyed kittens clutched against her substantial bosom. "I need somebody to drive a crate of baby raccoons to the wildlife rehab. If we're not there by five they lose their spot." She made kissy faces at the kittens, murmuring baby talk. "And coccidia is spreading through the holding room again. Think Helen'll take another sick litter?" I tried to wrench my attention back to where it needed to be. Orphaned raccoons. Sick kittens. Problems I could actually do something about. Excerpted from What's Done in Darkness: A Novel by Laura McHugh All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.