Tethered

An unusual, hauntingly atmospheric crime novel set within the dark confines of a funeral home.

Clara Marsh is an undertaker. She spends her solitary life with the dead, preparing their last baths, cleansing and beautifying their bodies and bidding them a final farewell with a bouquet from her own garden, in a combination designed especially for the deceased. Years before the novel's opening, Clara prepared the body of an unidentified young girl, nicknamed 'Precious Doe' by a horrified community, found murdered in a nearby strip of woods. The novel begins with another young girl entering Clara's life- a tiny, lost little scrap of a girl called Trecie, who seems to find solace in Clara's funeral home. When she disappears shortly after, Detective Mike Sullivan finds a link between Trecie's case and that of Precious Doe. And Clara is implicated when she identifies a young girl seen being horrifically abused on a porn tape found in the home of a prominent citizen as Trecie.

When Clara agrees to cooperate with Detective Sullivan to find the girl, her quiet, carefully structed life is shaken to its core. Clara's search for Tracie pulls her into a spiraling series of events that threatens to endanger the few people Clara has grown to love- and that finally brings her own tragic and long-buried past to the surface.

This is a beautifully written haunting and heartbreaking novel that explores themes of love, faith, isolation, loss and redemption.

Amy MacKinnon a former congressional aide, is a freelance writer whose commentaries have appeared in the Seattle Times, Boston Globe, Boston herald, Patriot Ledger, and on Public Radio's internationally acclaimed This American Life.
Her uncle was an undertake and Thanksgiving dinners were celebrated one floor up from his funeral parlour and, one year, included at tour of the rooms, an event which captured the young Amy's imagination and gave her the character of Clara Marsh. Amy lives in Massachusetts with her husband and their three young children.

Tethered
Hachette Live
Author: Amy MacKinnon
ISBN: 9780752899015
Price: $32.99


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