The Missing One

Kal McKenzie was never close to her mother Elena, whose coldness towards her spoiled any chance of a good relationship. When Elena dies of cancer, Kal feels forlorn: how do you mourn a mother who, inexplicably, just didn't seem to love you?While clearing out Elena's art studio, Kal finds a drawer packed with postcards, each bearing an identical one-line message from a Canadian gallery owner named Susannah Gillespie: "Thinking of you." Who is this woman and might she hold the key to her ruined relationship with her mother?Conflicted by her grief and shaken up from recently seeing a covetous text from an old girlfriend on her husband's cell phone, Kal impulsively sets off with her toddler Finn to Susannah's home on a remote British Columbian island, hoping to discover more about her mother amid the rugged and remote islands of the Pacific Northwest.Intertwining narratives follow Kal's present-day journey of self-discovery and Elena's early life as a marine biologist, activist, and mother in 1970s California. This gripping debut thriller wrestles with questions of identity, trust, and motherhood, while delivering a white-knuckle journey into the darkest corners of the human psyche.