Strange Harm: A Novel

From the author of Motherthing—When a teenage girl disappears from a supposedly haunted wood, everyone has a theory. Their stories are strange, but the truth is even stranger.

When Janie Yearling disappears from the small town of Gold River, her parents, Calvin and Annette, immediately make the primetime rounds, pleading for her safe return on every talk show and network news program that will have them. Annette becomes a bona fide star; her exquisite poise in the face of such pain is a marvel. Calvin, on the other hand, can’t stop crying long enough to get a word out; he becomes a punch line at best and, at worst, a potential suspect.

Fifteen years later, they’re no closer to finding out what happened to Janie; only now, no one cares. Janie’s story is circling the daytime TV drain when a young woman who’d once suffered her own star-making tragedy asks if Calvin and Annette want to be the subject of her new podcast. Calvin is skeptical, but Annette is thrilled—this could be their last chance to find out what really hap­pened to their girl.

Was it the creepy drifter who crossed paths with Janie in town that night, like most people believe? Or was it Calvin’s pet theory—one the disturbed pod­caster seems to be stoking, even though it drives Annette up the wall—that Druda, the tortured spirit said to haunt the river, pulled her into another world? Chilling, funny, and ultimately moving, Strange Harm is a kaleidoscopic novel about the many layers of narrative at work on us constantly—keeping us scared, keeping us anxious, and keeping the truth concealed.