The Lost Kings

Saskia Maarleveld delivers the goods when narrating Johnson’s (The Wolves of Winter) tale of family secrets, abandonment, and confronting one’s insecurities. Maintaining a perfectly detached tone, Maarleveld details Jeanie King’s painful memories of growing up in rural Washington with her twin brother, Jamie, both grieving their mother’s sudden death and living in fear of their abusive, grief-stricken father. When Jeanie was 12 years old, her father vanished under suspicious circumstances, taking Jamie with him. Twenty years later, in the present day, Jamie’s former flame, Maddox, finds her and brings her back to confront her father. It is only then that Jeanie can begin to heal. As the story shifts into the present, Maarleveld’s tone becomes multilayered and expressive, fully realizing the emotions of Jeanie and those who surround her—Maddox, who has always loved her; her father, who has never been able to comfort his daughter; and her therapist, who is using her in his research.