"After She Left" by Claire Amarti

I thought I would be reading a thriller or mystery. But it turned into something else entirely. 

Abigail Gibson walks out of her suburban New York home one morning, and she disappears, leaving behind her husband and 10-year-old son. Her mother and her sister Gillian try to call her, but the phone is unanswered. No one knows where what’s happened to her.

 

When Abigail’s husband is called to the other side of the world for a humanitarian emergency, Gillian takes charge of Sam, the 10-year-old. Gillian is having her own problems; she and her husband Oliver have been trying to have children for years, and it’s beginning to tear the fabric of their marriage. And she discovers that Sam is showing a number of sigs of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

 

Everyone in the family is in upheaval over Abigail’s disappearance. Then her credit card shows use in Miami. Abigail finally calls. With news. She’s found her birth mother.

 

Claire Amarti

No one, except their mother, knew she’d been adopted as a baby. Her birth mother turns out to be their father’s younger sister. The sister is dying from cancer. Everything Abigail and Gillian understood about themselves and their family has just been turned on its head. Giliian, their mother, and Sam fly to Miami. When Oliver and eventually Abigail’s husband follow, even more family secrets become known.

 

After She Left by Claire Amarti is the story of Gillian, Abigail , and their family. It begins as a mystery and turns into what is likely classified as women’s fiction. But it’s an absorbing story, even when the mystery turns out not to be one after all.

 

Amarti is also the author of The First Wife’s Secret and The Silent Daughter. She lives in New York City.