One Puzzling Afternoon
Description
"A clever, keep-'em-guessing murder mystery, an empathetic yet realistic portrayal of the toll dementia takes, and a meditation on how the brain can bury the most tragic memories...An outstanding must-read." --Booklist, STARRED review
One glimpse can unlock six decades of silence.
When eighty-four-year-old Edie Green sees her childhood friend Lucy--vanished without a trace in 1951--walking down the street as if nothing has changed, her family chalks it up to confusion. But Edie is sure of what she saw. As her memories fade, one truth stays with her: she holds the key to what happened all those years ago.
Moving between Edie's youth in post-war Cornwall and her present-day search for answers, One Puzzling Afternoon is a haunting, character-driven mystery about friendship, long-buried secrets, and the enduring imprint of the past. As she retraces the steps of a vanished summer, Edie must face what time has buried-- and what she's never been able to let go.
Set in a quiet English town and layered with memory, grief, and emotional truth, this poignant dual-timeline story explores how far we'll go to hold on to the people and moments that shaped us.
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Person
EMILY CRITCHLEY grew up in Essex and now lives in Hertfordshire where she works as a librarian. She has a first class BA in Creative Writing from London Metropolitan University and an MA with distinction in Creative Writing from Birkbeck University of London. Her YA debut Notes on my Family was nominated for the Carnegie, long listed for the Branford Boase, and book of the week in the Sunday Times, and her middle grade novel The Bear who Sailed the Ocean on an Iceberg was published in October 2021, both by independent publisher Everything With Words in the UK. One Puzzling Afternoon is her US debut.