The alone time

A quarter century ago, the Seng sisters--13-year-old Fiona and seven-year-old Violet--were found in Washington's Olympic National Park three months after their family's borrowed Cessna went down. Their parents' bodies were never found. Since that "Alone Time," Fiona continues to process her trauma through found-object art; she's preparing for a major exhibition that should change her life. After years of self-medicating with alcohol and drugs, Violet is giving college a third try, determined to become a writer. They've been estranged for the last six years, but they're going to need to provide a united front against the woman claiming she was their father's mistress, promising new revelations about the fateful crash. An upstart documentary maker insists the sisters need to tell their story (on film, of course) before their narrative gets usurped. The veneer on their carefully crafted survival tale, however, is cracking and exposure looms. What Marr (Lies We Bury, 2021) might lack in smooth exposition (clunky, didactic sentences abound) she convincingly compensates with twisted, cleverly red herring-littered plotting. Readers will gladly follow her lead to the final page.

Marr's (The Family Bones; Strangers We Know) fifth suspense novel finds sisters Fiona and Violet Seng still struggling, years after they survived the crash of their family's Cessna plane, which killed both of their parents and stranded the sisters (who were only children) in the woods for 12 weeks. To cope afterward, Fiona took to art, while Violet self-medicated with drugs and alcohol. Having grown apart in adulthood, the sisters will have to repair their relationship to defend themselves against accusations that the plane crashed deliberately. These claims, which question the sisters' version of events, are made by a woman who says she was their father's mistress and is telling her story to an ambitious documentarian. Are Fiona and Violet victims of a tragedy, or did they orchestrate the plane crash and ensure that their parents didn't make it out of the woods alive? As the novel is told from multiple perspectives, readers will have to pay close attention to who is narrating each chapter to avoid confusion. VERDICT A steady build-up that questions the origins of a tragedy and the motives of the survivors and pits survival, ambition, and perhaps the truth against each other, leading to a finale that will surprise even the most perceptive readers. Will appeal to fans of Jennifer Hillier, Jordan Harper, and Michelle Sacks.--George Lichman