Life changes in an instant. On a foggy beach in San Francisco, Abby Mason - photographer, fiancée, soon-to-be-stepmother - looks away from six-year-old Emma for an instant. By the time she looks back, Emma has disappeared.

Devastated by guilt, haunted by her fears about becoming a mother, Abby refuses to believe that Emma is dead. Now, as the days drag into weeks, as the police lose interest and fliers fade on telephone poles, Emma's father finds solace in religion. But Abby can only wander the beaches and city streets, attempting to recover the past and the little girl she lost.

Michelle Richmond is theNew York Times bestselling author ofThe Year of Fog,No One You Know, andThe Marriage Pact. Her award-winning stories and essays have appeared inGlimmer Train, Playboy, The Oxford American,and elsewhere. She has been a James Michener Fellow, and her fiction has received the Associated Writing Programs Award and the Mississippi Review Prize. A native of Mobile, Alabama, Michelle lives with her husband and son in San Francisco, where she is at work on her next novel.

A profoundly moving and compelling literary mystery which will appeal to fans of Alice Sebold, Sophie Hannah and Jodi Picoult