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When a teenage girl goes missing from a supposedly haunted wood, everyone in town has a theory. Their stories are strange, but the truth is even stranger.
An eerie, darkly funny new novel from the author of Motherthing.
When teenager 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 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 the truth about what happened their daughter—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 that night.
Rumours old and new begin to spread throughout the community. Was it the creepy drifter who crossed paths with Janie in town that night, like most people believe? Or could it be 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, somehow pulled her into another world?
Chilling, funny, insightful, and moving, Strange Harm is a kaleidoscopic novel about the stories we tell and the stories we're told—to keep us scared, to keep us anxious, and to keep the truth concealed.
