One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka Peninsula at the northeastern tip of Russia, two girls—sisters, ages eight and eleven—go missing. The police investigation goes cold from the outset. In the girls’ tightly-woven community, everyone must grapple with the loss. But the fear and danger is felt most profoundly among the women of this isolated place. Taking us one chapter per month across a year on Kamchatka, this powerful novel connects the lives of characters changed by the sisters’ abduction: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. Theirs is an ethnically diverse population in which racial tensions simmer, and so-called natives are often the first to be accused. As the story radiates from the peninsula’s capital city to its rural north, we are brought to places of astonishing beauty: densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and glassy seas.

POTENTIALLY SENSITIVE AREAS

Discrimination: Racial Insensitivity/Racism, Violence: Sexual Assault/Rape, Language: Strong Language, Sexual Content: Strong Sexual Content/Themes