One Night Gone

DEBUT In her first novel after two short-story collections, Laskowski writes about the lives of two damaged women whose stories begin decades apart but dovetail into one suspenseful conclusion. Maureen Haddaway is a runaway teenager who, after joining a traveling carnival, goes missing in the 1980s; Allison Simpson is a disgraced TV weather reporter discarded by her philandering husband in 2015. Both end up in the same seaside town, meeting the same people, making the same friends, and crossing the same beaches; both feel like outsiders for different reasons. When Allison meets and befriends Maureen’s best friend, Tammy, who has not stopped looking for Maureen in the 30 years since her disappearance, Allison is drawn into the mystery and the other secrets of Opal Beach; the twists and turns of both women’s relationships fuel this thriller.