A new mother returns to her Texas hometown seeking answers in Sarah Sawyer's debut, The Undercurrent, an unsettling literary suspense novel about difficult decisions, broken families, and the lengths to which mothers will go for their children.
In 2011, Bee is struggling with postpartum depression and isolation. When Leo, her brother's lifelong best friend and her first love, asks to meet, she's stunned to learn from him that her troubled, unpredictable twin, Gus, wants to talk to her after 17 years. Then she reads about a possible break in the case of Deecie, a girl who went missing during the summer of 1987, when Bee feels that everything fell apart. Bee decides it's time for her to finally return to Texas and introduce her baby to her mother.
In 1987, two women watch their sons grow into unknowable young men, creatures on the edge of adulthood with secret thoughts and activities. Mary has dedicated so much of her life to being Bee and Gus's mother that she clings to the dream of normalcy until an unplanned pregnancy and a terrible discovery force her to reevaluate everything. Across the street, Leo's mother, Diana, struggles to maintain her career and parent a child who has been getting in trouble at school for setting fires. Then Deecie disappears.
With beautiful, insightful prose and a thoroughly developed cast of flawed, relatable characters, Sawyer has crafted paragraphs that readers will stop to savor even as they breathlessly race through her pages. The Undercurrent is a great fit for book groups and fans of Angie Kim and Chris Whitaker. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian and freelance reviewer