April 1, 2024
Jess hasn't been back to Knife River in a long time, by choice. Her small, upstate New York hometown holds a lot of memories, none of them particularly good, but over it all hangs the disappearance of her mother, who, 15 years ago, when Jess was 13, went on a walk and never returned. Jess' older sister, Liz, chose the opposite tack, staying in Knife River so as to not miss a single clue, theory, or suspicion. When Liz receives a call that the local police may have found their mother's remains, the sisters are forced to grapple with potentially finding the answer to the biggest mystery of their lives--and what that answer means for their futures. In her first novel, Champine pours a strong brew of angst, unease, and catharsis, letting childhood roles and regression knock against adult preferences and independence. In the vein of Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects and Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train, Knife River skillfully blends intrigue, introspection, and the maddeningly powerful pull of family.
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April 15, 2024
Two sisters search for answers when new light is shed on their mother's disappearance. Fifteen years after her mother, Natalie Fairchild, went missing, 28-year-old Jess receives a shocking phone call. It's her semi-estranged older sister, Liz, saying their mother's bones have been discovered by a couple of kids playing in a field. Jess immediately packs up her meager belongings, leaves her girlfriend Sarah's home, and heads back to her hometown in upstate New York. Liz was just 19 when her mother disappeared and she was left to raise her 13-year-old sister, and she's still living in their childhood home. The house feels eerily untouched--there are even jars of canned peaches that a concerned neighbor brought over when their mother first disappeared. Liz once had big dreams of leaving town and studying aeronautics, but she also appears stuck in the past, commuting to the same bank teller job she's had for 15 years and wearing the same clothing given to her when their mother went missing. Liz is convinced that a local man named Nick Haines murdered their mother, but the police, and Jess, are less certain. Jess' memory of her teenage years is spotty, and she feels suspicious of almost every man she comes across. She is also, much to Liz's dismay, very distracted by rekindling her romance with Eva, her first love, who still lives in town. As the sisters try to piece together what happened to their mother (with frustratingly little help from the detectives), they also begin to build back their relationship. While Champine does a decent job of weaving clues about Natalie's disappearance through the book, it's the relationship between the sisters that shines here. Suspenseful and surprisingly moving.
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