Publication Date: October 8, 2024
An overwhelmed new mother becomes obsessed with the unsolved disappearance of a young girl from her small Texas hometown—and unearths her own family’s dark secret.
It’s 2011 and Deecie Jeffries’s missing person’s case in Austin, Texas, is still cold. New mom Bee, struggling with postpartum depression, is living in Portland, Maine, having left Austin–and those memories–far behind. Until Leo, her childhood crush and her estranged twin Gus’s best friend, suddenly resurfaces, drawing Bee back into their shared past.
Bee’s predictable life is upended, pushing her to return to her childhood home and piece together a neighborhood’s shattered history. Bee becomes consumed with a need to uncover the truth about Deecie’s disappearance and what happened to the families who lived across the field from one another—Gus, Leo, and their mothers: Mary, a homemaker, whose only escape is the local community theater, and Diana, a serious academic dedicated to her studies.
Told in multiple perspectives with two different timelines, The Undercurrent is a gripping portrait of motherhood, obsession, broken family bonds, and buried secrets.
The early days of motherhood are often a blur unless you are the one living through it. Bee is caught up in an endless cycle of feedings and sleeplessness, although her husband is an active participant.
Author Sarah Sawyer delivers a multi-narrated story that takes readers from Bee’s life in Portland, Maine, back to her home in Austin, Texas. Events spanning more than two decades are uncovered in The Undercurrent.
When a voice from the past reaches out, Bee begins to ponder the disappearance of a young girl from their neighborhood. That event kicked off a trio of tragedies impacting her and a neighboring family.
In addition to the mystery element, the story also delves into the complexity of relationships—both sibling and mother-to-child. Bee uncovers a dark family secret as she probes deeper into the past. The past/present time shift, along with multiple narrators, requires the reader to pay close attention.
The Undercurrent delivers a mystery focused on family relationships and the complexities of motherhood.
Sarah Sawyer is an English teacher who lives and works at a boarding school in Western Massachusetts where she finds endless humor and inspiration in her colleagues and students. She is a graduate of Amherst College and the Bread Loaf School of English. The Undercurrent is her first novel.
