Autorentext
Lisa Wingate is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Before We Were Yours, which has sold more than three million copies and been translated into over forty languages worldwide. The co-author, with Judy Christie, of the nonfiction book Before and After, Wingate is a Goodreads Choice Award winner, an Oklahoma Book Award finalist, a Southern Book Prize winner, and was named among the 2023 Distinguished Alumni of Oklahoma State University. She lives with her husband in North Texas and Central Colorado.

Zusammenfassung
**USA TODAY AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BESTSELLER • “Wingate’s stellar latest explores a centuries-long legacy of missing child cases. . . . Her portrayal of the region’s history, culture, and landscape enthralls. Wingate is at the top of her game.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours comes “a sweeping tale about little known history” (People).**

1990. Law enforcement ranger Valerie Boren-Odell arrives at Horsethief Trail National Park seeking a quiet place to raise her son. But no sooner has Valerie reported for duty than a teenage hiker goes missing and the long-hidden burial site of three children is discovered in a cave. Val’s quest to uncover the truth wins an ally among the Choctaw Nation’s Tribal Police but soon collides with the deadly legacy of the land itself.

1909. Eleven-year-old Olive Radley knows that her stepfather is a threat to the two Choctaw girls boarded in their home. When the older girl disappears, Ollie flees, taking six-year-old Nessa with her. Together they begin a perilous journey to the remote Winding Stair Mountains, the territory of outlaws, treasure hunters, and desperate men. Along the way, they form an unlikely band with other children struggling to get by on their own.

In this gripping novel, Lisa Wingate traces the story of children abandoned by the law and the battle to see justice done. Amid times of deep conflict over who owns the land and its riches, Ollie and Val each leave behind one life in search of another.

***Includes a downloadable PDF with a listing of primary resources and recommendations from the book, for further reading
**

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

Valerie Boren-Odell, Talihina, Oklahoma, 1990

When our ancestors first came to southeastern Oklahoma one of the first things they set their eyes on were the beautiful, forested Winding Stair Mountains. They are our Plymouth Rock, our Mississippi River, our Rocky Mountains, our Pacific Ocean. —Ron Glenn, Winding Stair Mountain Wilderness bill, S. 2571, congressional hearing, 1988.

Dear Val,

Why mince words? Dreams are wonderful things, but a single mother needs to be practical. Please tell me it isn’t too late for you to return to your job at the Arch in St. Louis?

Have you lost your mind? Talihina, Oklahoma? I can’t even find it on the map without putting on my glasses. No wonder you didn’t tell us ahead of time. Kenneth has been around asking about you, by the way. You know he thought you two were becoming more than just friends. I understand grief, my dear, but you can’t cling to it forever, and let’s face it, if you remarried, you wouldn’t have all these financial struggles. If you don’t call Kenneth to iron things out, I’m telling him where I sent this postcard to.

Put Charlie in the car and drive home. I know you have always been a free spirit, but it’s time to grow up.

—Gram

I read the postcard for the third time since grabbing it from the mail on my way to work, then survey the breathtaking valley below Emerald Vista turnout and try to decide how much trouble I’m in. My grandmother taught high school English for more than a half century. She does not end sentences with prepositions.

. . . where I sent this postcard to.

She is in a mood. This note is meant to tear me up a bit, and it does. To unsettle me slightly, and it does that, too.

I am in the backwoods of southeastern Oklahoma, where after a rain, the morning shadows linger long and deep, and the mountains exhale mist so thick it seems to have weight. The countryside exudes the eerie, forgotten feel of a place where a woman and a seven-year-old boy could simply vanish and no one would ever know.

A puff of wind slides by, unsettling the folder I pulled from my day pack to extract the postcard. A mockup brochure and a half dozen high-end paper samples tumble to the pavement and slide away like fallen leaves. I should chase them down, but instead, I stand frozen. My mind drifts all the way to Talihina, where a cheery yellow house offers the only acceptable daycare willing to watch over a boy whose mom’s new job will sometimes entail rotating days off and working odd hours.

Just go get him, I tell myself. Pick him up and pack everything back into the car and go. This is crazy. All of this is crazy.

Instead, I pull a slow breath. The morning air is thicker, greener, and warmer than I’m accustomed to in May. It smells of summer. Summer, and earth, and damp stone, and shortleaf pines. Different from St. Louis in a way that whispers something so compelling my heart quickens.

The yearning for wild spaces is as much a part of me as my father’s gray-green eyes and thick auburn hair. He fostered that passion in me even before a stint in Vietnam quietly severed my parents’ ten-year marriage and made the backcountry the only place he was at peace. Knowing him at all after that meant spending time in the woods, so as often as she could, my grandmother drove me from the Kansas City burbs to the Shawnee National Forest, where her only surviving son guided hikes and raft trips. Gram made those journeys seem like a gift rather than a burden, so I saw them that way, too.

I thought she, if anybody, would understand this job transfer from Gateway Arches in St. Louis to the newly minted Horsethief Trail National Park in Oklahoma’s Winding Stair Mountains. But now I wonder if she sees history repeating itself—another thirty-year-old parent running from pain instead of dealing with it. Another helpless kid caught in the tailwind.

Is this relocation a reckless escape attempt or a smart career move? The position here is a GS-9 level job. At Arches, developing programs and exhibits, shuffling tourists around patches of grass and concrete, I was doing what amounted to grade-level 5 tasks, which was all I could handle when Charlie was three and suddenly without a father. I didn’t have the mental space to care about career advancement. But it’s time now. This is my chance to step back into park law enforcement. I never thought I’d get the position at the new Winding Stair unit, and I still don’t know why I did. But here I am.

It isn’t selfish, I assure myself. It’s necessary. If Joel were here, he’d tell you to go for it.

Just the thought fills me with a bittersweet mix of warmth and longing. I wish he could share this stunning morning view. Joel liked nothing better than a mountain he hadn’t yet climbed. Nothing.

“Hey . . . your stuff!” The voice seems remote at first. “Hey, Ranger, you dropped your papers.”

I come back to earth and Emerald Vista overlook, where suddenly I’m not alone. From the path to a nearby campground, a spindly adolescent girl sprints across the pavement, snatching up my runaway brochure sample on the fly. She’s eleven, maybe twelve. A few years older than Charlie. Wiry with long, dark hair.

Clutching the folder to my chest, I gather the pieces still at my feet. When I straighten, the girl is on her way over with the rest of the…