The Long Way Back

Praise for The Long Way Back“For any parent, the most frightening nightmare is the disappearance of their child. In Nicole Baart’s extraordinary novel The Long Way Back, not only is a mother tortured by this terrible circumstance, but she also becomes a primary suspect. Baart writes with a poet’s eye for language and a storyteller’s gift for suspense. Readers already won over by Nicole Baart’s fine body of work will discover another sparkling gem, and new readers couldn’t find a better place to begin.”—William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author of This Tender Land“The Long Way Back is a beautifully written, atmospheric page-turner that brilliantly explores the complexities of the mother-daughter bond, finding it as fraught as it is profound.”—Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of A Good Marriage and Friends Like These“In Nicole Baart’s gripping new thriller The Long Way Back, a mother creates a perfect Instagram life for herself and her teenage daughter, traveling the country while chronicling their adventures for legions of fans. But despite doing everything right, never posting her daughter’s face and never identifying their location until they’ve moved on, things go horribly wrong. Timely and provocative, Baart’s marvelously relatable characters and gifted storytelling take the reader on a wild and unexpected ride. I loved this book!”—Karen Dionne, #1 internationally bestselling author of The Marsh King’s Daughter and The Wicked Sister“Riveting and timely, The Long Way Back is not just an unforgettable mother-daughter thriller, it’s a deeply felt love story about the natural world. In beautiful prose, Nicole Baart has penned a novel that will stick with me for a very long time.”—Jo Piazza, bestselling coauthor of We Are Not Like Them“Nicole Baart is the queen of the family thriller! This tender, propulsive story reveals a heart-twisting understanding of human nature and the risks we take to get what we want. Timely and thought-provoking, this “turn the pages as fast as you can” cautionary tale about the danger of the spotlight and the steep price of privacy will surprise you and haunt you, even after the gasp-worthy conclusion. Baart crafts her mother-daughter suspense not only with soul and passion and stomach-churning tension—but also a deep and important wisdom. Book clubs rejoice: this is the novel for you!”—Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA Today bestselling author“In The Long Way Back, Baart achieves the nearly impossible feat—writing that is tense and propulsive as well as poetically rendered. A beautiful story about the fraught relationships between parents and their children, the tension between growing up and learning the difficult truths about the dangers of independence, The Long Way Back will have you turning pages late into the night and holding your breath until the final, emotional scenes. I absolutely loved it.”—Danielle Girard, USA Today bestselling author Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.CLICK HERE TO SIGN UPAlready a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox. For all the free spirits, wild hearts, and brave explorers. PART I Charlie INSTAGRAM POST #1I must be a mermaid,I have no fearof depths anda great fearof shallow living.Anaïs Nin[IMAGE CONTENTS: A raven-haired girl beneath a waterfall.]It was a hollow caption, as empty and desolate as the husk of a seed. The photo had to be experienced, and Charlie felt sorry for anyone who couldn’t see Eva with the water cascading down her face and across her narrow shoulders. She was thirteen, sleek and plump, with a pointed nose, pointed chin, and two perfectly pointed ears that hinted at what she would one day be. Not pretty, per se—at least, not yet—but arresting, and made all the more extraordinary by the cold disdain in her sapphire eyes.Incongruous. That’s what it was. The petal-soft blush of her full cheeks paired with the penetrating wisdom of her gaze. A child caught at the exact intersection between girl and woman.“Mom,” Eva said, in the moment before Charlie snapped the picture, “don’t.”But Charlie did. It was a moment of madness, of ferocious love, that disintegrated after the shutter snapped and Eva tumbled off the slippery rock, falling headlong beneath the foamy spray of the waterfall. There was laughter then, and Charlie carefully packed away her camera and dove in to join her daughter. But the moment was resurrected later, when the image lit up Charlie’s computer screen.Without a doubt, the picture of Eva in the waterfall was the most powerful portrait that Charlie had ever taken. Eva was just turning, framed between a wall of greenish water on one side and slick, brown stone on the other. One slender hand was on the rock, and one hand was tangled in her long hair as she pushed damp curls out of her eyes. Before that, she had been posing. All artificial smiles and a self-conscious thrust to her jaw. But the last click of Charlie’s camera had captured a singular moment, an unexpected window into Eva’s soul. Something wild lived there, raw and untamed, a whole world contained in her eyes.Charlie couldn’t print it, not something so intimate and vulnerable, but it also seemed cruel not to share. So she cropped it close—one shockingly blue eye, a wet ribbon of hair against the blade of her cheekbone, the sparkle of sunlit water—and showed it to Eva.“That’s me?” She couldn’t suppress her grin, but tried by pinning her bottom lip between her teeth. “Wow, Mom. I mean, wow. Can we post it?”Their Sutton Girls Instagram page had been the only thing Eva truly wanted for her thirteenth birthday. Allegedly, all the kids in her class were already on social media (age limits be damned), and Eva felt the pinch of isolation when they chatted over chicken nuggets in the