Keep This for Me
A Novel
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
The acclaimed author of the “chilling, mesmerizing debut” (Rachel Harrison, author of The Return) Beneath the Stairs returns with a gripping, atmospheric suspense novel about a woman investigating a serial killer’s connection to her mother’s disappearance—for fans of I Have Some Questions for You and Notes on an Execution.
One hot August night in 1993, a young couple go to a party. When their car breaks down, they are picked up by a truck driver who attacks the man and abducts the woman. She is never seen again.
That woman was Fiona Green’s mother.
When the trucker, Eddie Ward, is caught, a mass grave of bodies is discovered in his backyard but Fiona’s mother isn’t there. Thirty years later, on his prison deathbed, Ward insists that he didn’t kill her, so Fiona finds herself back in the small town where her mother disappeared. Fighting demons of her own, she’s shocked when history repeats itself: another woman, another roadside breakdown, and another disappearance. Only this time the primary suspect is Jason Ward, Eddie’s son. Desperate, Fiona hunts down answers, unaware that she is being drawn into a dangerous trap.
With Jennifer Fawcett’s signature “suspenseful and immersive” (Library Journal) prose, Keep This for Me is a fresh, spellbinding exploration of what we unwillingly inherit from our parents and how one random act can send ripples years into the future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fawcett's dour sophomore effort (after Beneath the Stairs) explores the reverberations of a kidnapping across three generations. In 1993, troubled young couple Ana and Ben head to a party with hopes of rousing Ana from her postpartum depression, only to be abducted by a truck driver. Ben manages to escape, but Ana disappears and is never seen again. Serial killer Eddie Ward is eventually caught and blamed for the incident, but Ana's body is never found. Thirty years later, a dying, morphine-addled Eddie tells prison staffers that he didn't kill Ana, prompting Ben and Ana's daughter, Fiona Green—who's struggling with her own postpartum depression—to return to the town where her mother disappeared. Then a woman named Angela Ramirez vanishes under circumstances eerily similar to Ana's. Eddie's adult son, Jason, emerges as a suspect in Angela's disappearance, leading both Jason and Fiona to search for the truth about crimes past and present. Fawcett maintains little mystery about the real perpetrator's identity, instead anchoring the novel in psychological portraits of Fiona and Jason. Unfortunately, neither character really comes to life, and the plot's insistent joylessness eventually takes a toll. It's a bummer.
