C
Christian White
Christian White is an Australian author recognized for his suspense novels. His works include "The Nowhere Child," "The Ledge," and "The Wife and the Widow."
The Nowhere Child
Synopsis
Kim Leamy teaches photography in Melbourne and is quietly grieving her mother, who died of cancer a few years ago. Then a stranger named James Finn approaches her with an old photograph and an impossible claim: that Kim is really Sammy Went, a toddler who disappeared from her home in the small town of Manson, Kentucky, decades earlier, on the other side of the world.
Kim dismisses it at first. But the resemblance between her childhood photos and the missing girl is undeniable, and when she starts asking questions, she uncovers a hint that her late mother was keeping secrets. Unable to let it go, Kim travels to Kentucky to meet the family Sammy left behind and to learn what really happened the day the little girl vanished.
Told in alternating "now" and "then" chapters, The Nowhere Child unspools two mysteries at once: the modern search for the truth about Kim's identity, and the story of the Went family in the days surrounding Sammy's disappearance, a family bound up with a fervent snake-handling church. Christian White's award-winning debut is a tense, twisting thriller about family, faith, and the buried secrets that shape who we become.
Genres
Characters
Kim LeamyProtagonist
A Melbourne photography teacher confronted with the claim that she is a girl who disappeared from Kentucky as a toddler.
Sammy WentSupporting
The two-year-old who vanished from her family's home in Manson, Kentucky, at the heart of the mystery.
James FinnSupporting
The stranger who approaches Kim with a photograph and the theory that she is the missing Sammy Went.
Jack WentSupporting
Sammy's father, part of the Kentucky family Kim travels to meet.
Molly WentSupporting
Sammy's devout mother, deeply involved in the snake-handling Church of the Light Within.
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