Returning to the small New England town of his youth where a killer had once stalked its streets, writer Wilder Harlow, while penning his memoir, fears his grip on the truth of the tragedy fading and that this will not only be his last book, but the last thing he ever does. 200,000 first printing.
"In a lonely cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of a sun-drenched summer of his youth, and of the killer that stalked the small New England town. And of the terrible tragedy that forever bonded him with his friends Nat and Harper in unknowable ways. Decades later, Wilder returns to the town in an attempt to recount that summer's events in his memoirs. But as he writes, Wilder begins to fear his grip on the truth is fading ... and that the book may be writing itself."--
“If you love the novels of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Tana French, here’s your next obsession.”—Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog
From Catriona Ward, author of The Last House on Needless Street, comes a masterful story about friendship and betrayal, dark obsessions, and the impossibility of escaping your own story.
In a cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow has begun the last book he will ever write.
It is the story about the sun-drenched summer days of his youth in Whistler Bay, and the blood-stained path of the killer that stalked his small vacation town. About the terrible secret he and his companions, Nat and Harper, discovered entombed in the coves off the bay. And how the pact they swore that day echoed down the decades, forever shaping their lives.
But the more Wilder writes, the less he trusts himself and his memory. He starts to see things that can’t be real – notes hidden in the cabin, from an old friend now dead; a woman with dark hair drowning in the icy waters below, calling for help; entire chapters he doesn’t recall typing, appearing overnight. Who, or what, is haunting Wilder?
No longer able to trust his own eyes, Wilder begins to fear that this will not only be his last book, but the last thing he ever does.
“An origami puzzle of a book, the mystery so beautifully crafted you don’t see the folds, with edges sharp as a paper cut.”—Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls
