Arrowood
Finalist for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel
Arrowood is the most ornate and grand of the historical houses that line the Mississippi River in southern Iowa. But the house has a mystery it has never revealed: It’s where Arden Arrowood’s younger twin sisters vanished on her watch twenty years ago—never to be seen again. After the twins’ disappearance, Arden’s parents divorced and the Arrowoods left the big house that had been in their family for generations. And Arden’s own life has fallen apart: She can’t finish her master’s thesis, and a misguided love affair has ended badly. She has held on to the hope that her sisters are still alive, and it seems she can’t move forward until she finds them. When her father dies and she inherits Arrowood, Arden returns to her childhood home determined to discover what really happened to her sisters that traumatic summer.
Arden’s return to the town of Keokuk—and the now infamous house that bears her name—is greeted with curiosity. But she is welcomed back by her old neighbor and first love, Ben Ferris, whose family, she slowly learns, knows more about the Arrowoods’ secrets and their small, closed community than she ever realized. With the help of a young amateur investigator, Arden tracks down the man who was the prime suspect in the kidnapping. But the house and the surrounding town hold their secrets close—and the truth, when Arden finds it, is more devastating than she ever could have imagined.
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Praise for Arrowood
“Superb and subtle psychological suspense, and a compelling mystery, too . . . I thought I knew who did it, but I was wrong—four times.”—Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels
"An absorbing, spine-tingling novel brimming with atmosphere." —Daily Express (U.K.)
"Cool, clever, and infused with a compellingly chilly melancholy, Arrowood kept me guessing and re-guessing all the way to its inexorable conclusion." —Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10
“This robust, old-fashioned gothic mystery has everything you’re looking for: a creepy old house, a tenant with a secret history, and even a few ghosts. Laura McHugh’s novel sits at the intersection of memory and history, astutely asking whether we carry the past or it carries us.”—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Storyteller and Leaving Time
“An eloquently eerie tale." —Booklist
"A chilling, twisting tale of family, memory, and home...[a] terrific choice for Laura Lippman and Sue Grafton readers.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Poignant . . . lyrical.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"I cannot praise this book enough. It draws you in to the point you felt like someone you loved had disappeared and you’re haunted by it. Laura McHugh did a brilliant job of showing us that our lives can be shaped by our memories and that those are not always as accurate as we would believe." —San Francisco Book Review