Source: Review Copy
Publication: 19th September 2019 from Trapeze
PP: 336
ISBN-13: 978-1409178927
You trust your family. They love you. Don’t they?
When 17-year-old Eva Olsen awakes after a horrific accident that has left her bedbound, her parents are right by her side. Devoted, they watch over her night and day in the attic room of their family home in the forests of Norway.
But the accident has left Eva without her most recent memories, and not everything is as it seems. As secrets from the night of the accident begin to surface, Eva realises – she has to escape her parents’ house and discover the truth. But what if someone doesn’t want her to find it?
I am delighted to feature Isabel Ashdown’s latest psychological thriller, Lake Child on my blog today. Isabel has written a fabulous feature for us, highlighting the complex family relationships that lie at the heart of our domestic relationships and what happens when trust is eroded or taken away.
Without further ado, over to Isabel:
Isabel Ashdown on Family Mysteries & Missing Babies
My latest psychological thriller, Lake Child, centres on the mystery of a young Norwegian woman, Eva, as she wakes after an accident and finds herself confined – locked away – in the attic room of her family’s forest home in the heart of Norway’s ancient fjords. Told from Eva’s perspective, it’s about family secrets and lies – it’s about the lengths we’ll go to, to protect the ones we love – and it’s about escape.
The second voice in Lake Child is very different, and its narrative is concerned with a missing child cold case – that of a British infant, snatched from a Dorset hospital just days after birth. I did a lot of reading around ‘abducted babies’ when I wrote Lake Child, and found myself equally fascinated and horrified by the idea of never knowing what happened to that child. As a parent or relative, you would forever wonder, where are they now? What are they doing? Who are they with? It’s certainly something you could never fully recover from; the ultimate and most devastating kind of unfinished business. Being someone profoundly interested in the dynamics of family – good and bad – it’s exactly the kind of emotion-led mystery that I love to write about.
I think it’s human nature to be intrigued by family relationships – it’s more complex than mere nosiness – and it’s no wonder to me that we’re particularly interested in exploring the darker corners of our family histories. What is it we’re looking for, when we dig deeper into our genealogy? Some drama? Some context? Something which renders us more connected to the wider world? When I was exploring my personal ancestry lately, I was more intrigued to find the tales of struggle – for example a great-grandmother growing up in the workhouse – than I was to discover good fortune or upward mobility! I think this universal interest in family is why so many writers like me continue to create stories around those relationships – often the most difficult and unpredictable relationships we’ll ever have.
Thank you so much, Isabel. Sounds fascinating, doesn’t it? You can purchase Lake Child here:
Isabel Ashdown was born in London and grew up on the Sussex coast. Her writing career first took off ten years ago when an extract of her debut novel GLASSHOPPER won a national writing competition and was twice named among the Best Books of the Year. Today she is the author of seven books, a Royal Literary Fund Lector, and a regular creative writing host at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. She lives and writes in West Sussex with her family and their two dogs.
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