As children wage mock battles in the playground of Woodside Elementary School, two students, a little girl and boy, vanish into the woods behind the school. Later, only one of them, Adam, a nine-year-old boy with autism, is found alive, the sole witness to an incomprehensible killing. Barely verbal on most days, Adam has retreated into a silent world that Cara, his mother, knows only too well. With her community in shock and her son unable to help with the police investigation, Cara tries to decode the puzzling events.

When another child goes missing, Adam’s mother realizes that only she can unlock her son’s silence and interpret the changes in Adam’s behavior not only to help him through the trauma, but also to help the police catch a killer. And as she moves closer to exposing the truth, her unsettling past begins to emerge from the shadows. In her desperate desire to protect her child from real life, has she made his world a more dangerous place?

A thrilling novel of psychological suspense and a gripping tale of a crime that strikes at the core of a small community, Cammie McGovern’s heartrending novel is, above all, the powerful story of the tender and complex bond between a mother and her young son.