Tell Me What I Am: A Novel [Paperback]

WINNER OF THE CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION'S GOLD DAGGER AWARD

Sharp, poignant, thrilling and moving . . . . Tell Me What I Am is the kind of richly drawn, achingly atmospheric crime novel you can totally immerse yourself in.”—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark

Two women wrenched apart by a family members disappearance must find a way back to each other in this gripping domestic thriller and haunting page-turner by the author ofA Crooked Tree.

Nessa Garveys sister Deena vanished without a trace in Philadelphia in 2004. In all that time, Nessa has never once doubted what her instincts told her: her sisters ex-husband has gotten away with an unspeakable crime.

Nessas niece, Ruby, is raised by her father, the man Nessa suspects, in rural Vermont, on the shores of Lake Champlain. Ruby learns how to hunt, how the plants and trees grow, how to avoid making her father angry. The one question she longs to ask is the one she knows she cannot voice: What really happened to her mother?

Over fourteen years, four hundred miles apart, these two women slowly begin to unearth the complex family secrets and history of insidious power and control that has shaped them both in such different ways. But can they reach each other in time?

Tell Me What I Amis a riveting, indelible tour de force of buried secrets and unlikely resilience.

A wrenching portrait of the umbilical bond between mother and child and, more powerfully still, an icily persuasive account of the subtle dark arts of male coercion and abuse. -Daily Mail (London)

“Mannion’s use of language is spare and unembellished, adding a seamless fit to the dark tenor of the story . . . . A deep-probing, layered story undulating through the shadows of domestic violence,Tell Me What I Amis a finely wrougl3-