Found Drowned

Based on a 19th century unsolved murder, this “artfully constructed” historical novel explores family life and a mysterious death in the Maritime Provinces (Quill & Quire). Nova Scotia, 1876. Sixteen-year-old Mary Harney is a dreamer who wants more than anything to escape her family’s Cumberland County homestead. Terrorized by her alcoholic father, she receives cold comfort from her melancholy mother, Ann. But when Ann becomes ill, the already tenuous family life begins to unravel—until the September evening when Mary suddenly goes missing. Across the water on Prince Edward Island, Gilbert Bell’s son finds a body washed up on the beach below the family farm. Mary’s father quickly identifies the body as hers. As the community is visited first by the local coroner and then by investigators, a mysterious tale comes into focus. Found Drowned is both a riveting domestic thriller and a darkly fascinating picture of 19th century life, law, and criminal investigation in Nova Scotia. At once tightly plotted and pensive, the novel travels back to the circumstances that led to Mary’s disappearance and then back further to the circumstances of her parents’ marriage, all the while building toward a raucous courtroom finale.