In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family's summer house on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family - her father takes his own life, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child.
Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine. For Justine, the lake house offers freedom and stability - a way to escape her manipulative boyfriend and give her daughters the home she never had. But the long Minnesota winter is just beginning. The house is cold and dilapidated. The dark, silent lake is isolated and eerie. Her only neighbor is a strange old man who seems to know more about the summer of 1935 than he's telling.
Soon Justine's troubled oldest daughter becomes obsessed with Emily's disappearance, her absent mother reappears, and the man she left launches a dangerous plan to get her back. In a house haunted by the sorrows of the women who came before her, Justine must overcome their tragic legacy if she hopes to save herself and her children.

About the Author
Heather Young is the author of two novels. Her debut, The Lost Girls, won the Strand Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for an Edgar Award. The Distant Dead was named one of the Best Books of Summer 2020 by People Magazine, Parade, and CrimeReads. A former antitrust and intellectual property litigator, she traded the legal world for the literary one and earned her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2011. Heather lives in Mill Valley, California, where she writes, bikes, hikes, and reads books by other people that she wishes she'd written.

Reviews
Haunting -- Joan Smith * Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month *
An absorbing neo-gothic novel * Times & Sunday Times Crime Club (Pick of the Week) *
Suspenseful, gripping and heartbreaking * Heat *
This is a cracking debut, tense and shocking -- Hephzibah Anderson * Mail on Sunday *
Cleverly told through dual timelines of Lucy's journals and Justine's voice, this is sensitive and tense storytelling * Daily Mail *



Book Information
ISBN 9780857308184
Author Heather Young
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Verve Books
Publisher Verve Books