The Good Parents

A girl's disappearance in Australia induces a family reckoning in this "dark and lovely work... full of elegance and mystery" ( The New York Times Book Review).

A two-time winner of Australia's prestigious The AgeBook of the Year Award, Joan London's debut novel, Gilgamesh, a New York Times Notable Book, was published to rapturous acclaim both in her native Australia and in the United States. Now, London delivers The Good Parents, a "completely absorbing" tale of mother love and the harrowing moment when a daughter spreads her wings and vanishes from her parents' orbit ( The Boston Globe).

Maya de Jong is a shy, sweet, eighteen-year-old country girl who moves to Melbourne and begins an affair with her older, married boss. When Maya's parents, Toni and Jacob, arrive for a visit, Maya is gone, and no one knows where. Maya, for reasons of her own, leaves haunting clues in late-night calls to her brother at home, carefully-and puzzlingly-avoiding detection by the two people who love her most. Ultimately, to find her daughter Toni will have to revisit a part of her own past that she thought she had shut off forever-the closest she ever came to being a lost girl herself.

The Good Parentsis a stunning portrait of familial love, delusions and compromises, and how far we can drift apart in the moments between the words we speak. Enthralling, unsettling, and riveting, this "arresting novel... explains the attraction of bad love for young women attempting to break free" ( The Independent).