Book Review: The Nowhere Child By Christian White

Kim Leamy is an Australian photography teacher based in Melbourne.

Kim has just learnt she is actually Sammy Went, a two-year-old who went missing from her bedroom in a small Kentucky town 28 years earlier. There are even DNA results to prove it. The man she thought was her Dad will not give her the answers she needs, out of respect for her Mother who died a few years earlier. Desperate to know the secrets of her past, she flies to Kentucky with the man who claims to be her older brother.

In Manson, Kentucky she also meets her older sister, her brittle and fanatical birth mother, as well as others who knew her when she was a toddler. She learns about the religious cult she was being raised in, where handling rattle snakes and speaking in tongues were the basis for weekly church services. But the mystery is no closer to being solved.

Who took her? Why did they take her? How? Told from multiple perspectives, past and present, author Christian White slowly unravels the dangerous secrets and deadly lies that have prevailed in Manson. Expertly executed, this thriller is a well thought out page turner, by a debut Australian author.

Affirm Press $32.99