Down the Rabbit Hole

(Paperback)

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Alice Montgomery goes missing in 2015.

Seven years later, her best friend Hannah is bouncing from job to job, house to house, forever feeling the need to outrun something, but unsure what. With the niggling need to move nipping at her heels, Hannah decides to return to her hometown for the first time since she left, to help her mum after surgery. The relationship is long-fractured, broken apart by grief after the suicide of Hannah's father when she was eleven.

When Hannah hears that Marnie Montgomery, Alice's mum, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, she is seized by terror that she will never get closure for her friend's disappearance. An addict and recluse, rumours have long-since dogged Marnie - rumours that she was responsible for her daughter going missing.
Marnie insists she had nothing to do with Alice's disappearance and points a finger instead at a teacher, Rachel Olney, who is nursing broken dreams and haunted by a single bad decision she made long ago.

What unfolds is a tale of three women - Hannah, Marnie, Rachel - and of grief left unchecked, of what it means to be a mother, a daughter, and of all the terrible ways in which we can hurt one another. On the periphery, the mystery of Alice dances, but what becomes central is a story not of a crime, but of those left behind by tragedy, desperately seeking closure that might not exist.

Author Bio

Shaeden Berry is a writer with a BA in English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing. Her short stories have featured in anthologies such as Kill Your Darlings' New Australian Fiction 2023, The Unexpected Party and Strangely Enough. She lives in Boorloo with her partner and their two cats, Frumpkin and George.