Eleven months after Cassie Novak went missing at sixteen, she reappeared on a 7-Eleven security camera, tearing open packages and eating in aisle three, a newborn on her hip. Jess McKinley, the seven-year-old neighbor who disappeared the same night, didn’t come home. According to Cassie, their abductor killed Jess and dumped her in Banberry Lake. He was never caught. Cassie became America’s survivor.
Thirty years later, she’s the host of The Missing and Gone, cable’s most vicious true-crime show—also the most watched, thank you very much—where she decides nightly, for seven million viewers, whose stories don’t add up. She’s made a living spotting liars. Being one helps. And every night when she’s alone in her apartment, she still talks to Jess.
But then a drought dries up Banberry Lake, and Jess’s body isn’t in it. As the media begins picking apart Cassie’s story, her daughter-in-law, Grace, starts digging into the case. She’s asking the questions Cassie always claimed she couldn’t answer. When Grace goes missing, the police immediately suspect Cassie’s son, Ethan. He was the last person to see his wife alive, and the public knows he was fathered by the monster who abducted his mother. Worse, Cassie has spent ten seasons teaching America to always look at the husband.
Now, Cassie must retrace the steps of Grace’s investigation and follow it wherever it leads, even if it’s to her own story. But each step she takes is a step toward the truth of that night, and the confession that would save her son is the same one that would destroy her.