The Girl in the Red Coat
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3.9 • 37 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa First Novel Award
Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award
'Mesmerising, compulsive, deliciously dark' LUCY FOLEY
Carmel is missing - but doesn't know she's lost.
When sensitive, distracted eight-year-old Carmel becomes separated from her mother at a local children's festival, a man claiming to be her estranged grandfather finds her - and takes her.
Unable to accept the possibility that her daughter might be gone for good, Beth makes it her mission to find her. But in what she's told is her new family, Carmel has embarked on an extraordinary journey, one that will make her question who she is - and who she might become.
'Keeps the reader turning pages at a frantic clip . . . What's most powerful here is not whodunnit, or even why, but how this mother and daughter bear their separation.' CELESTE NG
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British single mother Beth knows her eight-year-old daughter, Carmel, has a tendency to wander at a local corn maze, on school trips but one foggy day, the girl vanishes at a local festival and cannot be found. A man who claims to be Carmel's grandfather convinces her that Beth has been in a terrible accident, so Carmel leaves the fairgrounds with him and winds up at a secluded home with the man and his female companion, Dorothy. As Beth frantically searches and slowly isolates herself from the outside world, Carmel is told after careful manipulation that her mother has died, and soon finds herself in America with her new "grandparents," who work as spiritualist healers. Carmel fights to remember her past, but as time passes and she crisscrosses the country, her old life begins to fade. It takes everything in her to remember her name, her address, and her parents. Hamer's spectacular debut skillfully chronicles the nightmare of child abduction. Telling the story in two remarkable voices, with Beth's chapters unfurling in past tense and Carmel's in present tense, the author weaves a page-turning narrative. The trajectories of the novel's two leads through despair, hope, and redemption are believable and nuanced, resulting in a morally complex, haunting read.
