The Weight of Silence

Heather Gudenkauf ensnares listeners in the spellbinding web of her suspense-filled debut novel as the mysterious disappearance of two seven-year-old girls dredges up unsettling suspicions and painful secrets in a small Iowa town. Dragged into the woods in pre-dawn darkness, little Calli Clark wants to scream. But she can’t. She hasn’t breathed a word since being traumatized as a toddler. Soon, her best friend Petra—Calli’s voice for the last three years—peers through her bedroom window and is lured into the same woods. Already haunted by the unsolved murder of another local girl who was recently snatched fromher home, Sheriff Martin launches an immediate search for the missing children. In this riveting tale—seamlessly told from multiple perspectives—tension builds while fear and desperation pit neighbor against neighbor. Brilliantly illuminating such characters as a drunken wife-beater and a vengeful professor, a mesmerizing performance by a full cast of narrators keeps listeners in rapt attention right through the stunning conclusion. “Deeply moving and exquisitely lyrical, this is a powerhouse of a debut novel.”—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times best-selling author