For most of us, memories of childhood are hazy like a faded Polaroid photo. I don’t remember how old I was when I rolled through poison ivy in my grandparents’ backyard, but I remember the intense itch of the rash and the smell of the tomato soup bath that followed. But for psychologist Arles Shepherd, the protagonist of award-winning author Jenny Milchman’s series starter The Usual Silence, a literal faded Polaroid may hold the key to her past.
There’s so much Arles can’t remember about her own childhood. It’s part of what drew her to her profession of caring for troubled children. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to set up a treatment center on her childhood estate in the remote Adirondack wilderness, but something about this feels, dare she say, predestined?
Meanwhile, Cass Monroe is desperately searching for his missing twelve-year-old daughter. The case has nothing to do with Arles. It has nothing to do with any of Arles’s patients. And yet…
It’s a race against time not only to find a child but also to uncover the facts about Arles’s past and the secret about her patients’ traumas, as these interconnected mysteries may hold the answers. With the most pressing truths, Arles may finally develop the full picture that’s been developing before her eyes all these years.
—Jessica Tribble Wells, Editor