Safe and Sound

November 1, 2023

McHugh, an LJ Best Book winner, returns to her rural Ozark landscape of choice, this time with the story of two sisters trapped in a small town with little on their horizon. Their cousin had found a way out, until someone made her disappear. As the sisters investigate what happened, they find terrors. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from February 12, 2024
McHugh’s standout latest (after The Weight of Blood) centers on the disappearance of teenager Grace Crow, who vanished from her small hometown of Beaumont, Mo., while babysitting her cousins, Amelia and Kylee, leaving behind only a pool of blood. Six years later, Amelia is waitressing at the local Waffle House and encouraging the younger Kylee to finish high school so they can leave Beaumont and avoid the fates of their aunt, who punches a clock at the meatpacking plant, and mother, who works as a stripper. Amelia has never gotten over Grace’s disappearance, and often wonders if Alan, her seedy manager at the Waffle House (where Grace also worked), might have had something to do with it. When an unidentified young woman’s remains turn up near the county line, Amelia and Kylee ramp up their sleuthing efforts, adding Grace’s boyfriend, Levi, to their list of suspects. As they get closer to the truth, the sisters come to fear that whoever made Grace disappear won’t hesitate to do the same to them. McHugh seamlessly combines eerie mystery with gritty social realism, grounding the story’s hair-raising jolts in the emotional realities of her three-dimensional characters. Readers won’t be able to put this down. Agent: Sally Wofford-Girand, Union Literary.

March 15, 2024
Six years after a violent home invasion and the mysterious disappearance of their older cousin, two sisters begin to put together the pieces of what actually happened. No one ever leaves the backwater town of Beaumont, Missouri. Amelia and Kylee Crow's older cousin, Grace, comes closest to getting out--she was both at the top of her class and the first in their family to get into college--but all that changed the night she vanished while babysitting them. Years have passed since that fateful, bloody evening, and while most of Beaumont's residents have moved on with their lives, Amelia can't shake the feeling that the truth of what happened is still out there waiting to be found--and so is Grace, dead or alive. When the body of a young woman is discovered on a piece of property in town, old questions are dredged up, fingers are pointed, and Amelia and Kylee soon learn that their family might not be the only one with skeletons in the closet. The story is told in alternating sections, starting with chapters narrated by Amelia as she and Kylee search for answers, and then switching to chapters written from Grace's point of view leading up to the night of her disappearance. Grace's chapters help readers fill in the pieces that Amelia and Kylee struggle to put together, as well as emphasize the love that exists among all three girls in a world that is extremely unkind and violent toward young women. Where McHugh's writing truly shines, however, is in her descriptions of the town of Beaumont and its residents. From Amelia and Kylee's pole-dancer mother--who loves and deeply resents her daughters in equal measure--to the meatpacking plant where everyone works after high school, she deftly captures the hardships of a small and insular community with vivid detail. A suspenseful tale of resilience that will resonate with anyone who has ever yearned for a fresh start.

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April 1, 2024
Kylee and Amelia are about to graduate from high school in Beaumont, Missouri. The small town has little to offer, and those who want a better future strive to leave. Grace, Kylee and Amelia's cousin, had a college scholarship and dreams of an interesting career when she vanished six years ago. The girls want to know what happened, and they begin to investigate. The story unfolds, taking readers back in time, where they learn of a dysfunctional family with single mothers barely eking out a living and young girls working as waitresses. The girls must deal with sexual harassment and a pedophile uncle. Their boyfriends offer protection but also try to control them. When a skeleton is discovered nearby, everyone thinks that it is Grace, but the truth is more complicated. Determined to find the truth, Kylee and Amelia continue their search, putting themselves in grave danger. McHugh (What's Done in Darkness, 2021) has created a beautifully written, bleak portrait of rural poverty and despair. Readers will hope for the best, but the surprising ending will keep them wondering.

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