River of Reticence

About the Book

Suspense · Dual-perspective mystery · Sugar Maple Heights, Vermont · 1968–1984

Sugar Maple Heights, Vermont, 1968. Four-year-old Linnea doesn’t know what a nickname is until the girl across the road gives her one. Jett is older, braver and the prettiest girl Linnea has ever seen. She calls her Sprite, and she becomes the one bright thing in a house ruled by a father’s temper and a mother’s silence.

Linnea learns early that the safest thing to say is nothing. As she grows up in the shadow of the woods and the river that runs beside River Road, she keeps her silence about what happens at home, about Jett, and about the things a girl should never have to carry alone.

Ten years later, rookie officer Hank Jones arrives in maple country to make up a third of a two-town police force. He expects quiet back roads and fender benders. Instead he finds a town full of unspoken history, and a girl with a hiking pack who is holding on to more than anyone knows.

Told in two voices across two decades, River of Reticence is a story about friendship, survival and the weight of the things we never say.

Content note: Contains depictions of domestic abuse and suicide.