Vanishing Falls: A Novel [9780062978493]

Overview

One of CrimeReads Most Anticipated Books of the Year!

"This
literary thriller paints as vivid a landscape as any book coming out this
summer...Gee creates a lush, tantalizing world that
readers will want to travel into deeper and deeper."—CrimeReads

Celia
Lily is rich, beautiful, and admired. She’s also missing. And the search for
the glamorous socialite is about to expose all the dark, dirty secrets of
Vanishing Falls…

Deep
within the lush Tasmanian rainforest is the remote town of Vanishing Falls, a
place with a storied past. The town’s showpiece, built in the 1800s, is its Calendar
House—currently occupied by Jack Lily, a prominent art collector and landowner;
his wife, Celia; and their four daughters. The elaborate, eccentrically
designed mansion houses one masterpiece and 52 rooms—and Celia Lily isn’t in
any of them. She has vanished without a trace.…

Joelle
Smithton knows that a few folks in Vanishing Falls believe that she’s
simple-minded. It’s true that Joelle’s brain works a little differently—a
legacy of shocking childhood trauma. But Joelle sees far more than most people
realize, and remembers details that others cast away. For instance, she knows
that Celia’s husband, Jack, has connections to unsavory local characters whom
he’s desperate to keep hidden. He’s not the only one in town with something to
conceal. Even Joelle’s own husband, Brian, a butcher, is acting suspiciously.
While the police flounder, unable to find Celia, Joelle is gradually parsing
the truth from the gossip she hears and from the simple gestures and statements
that can unwittingly reveal so much.  

Just
as the water from the falls disappears into the ground, gushing away through
subterranean creeks, the secrets in Vanishing Falls are pulsing through the
town, about to converge. And when they do, Joelle must summon the courage to
reveal what really happened to Celia, even if it means exposing her own past…