LIES WE BURY was given a starred review from Kirkus! The reviewer calls LIES WE BURY, “A deep, deep dive into unspeakable memories and their unimaginably shocking legacy.”

Twenty years after escaping a hyperextended childhood trauma, a peripatetic photographer touches down in Portland to find even grimmer nightmares awaiting her.

Marissa Mo was born into captivity. Her mother, Rosemary, had been kidnapped and impregnated by Chet Granger, and she gave  birth to Marissa in the basement where she was kept. A few months later, another of his prisoners gave birth to Jenessa, and a third captive died four years later giving birth to Lily. Eventually Rosemary and the three girls escaped, but not really. Neither Chet’s imprisonment nor the cash settlement they’d received restored them to normalcy, and they’ve all, in their different ways and largely isolated from each other, been living on the brink ever since. Marissa, who’s taken the name Claire Lou, has decided to settle in the Oregon city that’s home to Jenessa and their two mothers. She quickly snags piecemeal work with the Portland Post and then a full-time job on the basis of pictures she’s snapped at the Four Alarm Brewery, which suddenly turn into pictures of possible suspects when the police find the body of a strip-club dancer in a tunnel beneath the pub hours later. A cryptic note reveals that Claire is being watched by someone who knows her horrifying past, someone who’s taunting her to be the first on the scene of subsequent tunnel murders. “This isn’t my first stalker,” she reflects; she’s been fleeing the spotlight ever since her escape from Chet. Now Marr presents the cherry on the sundae: Claire learns that Chet’s about to be paroled, and he wants to see her and become every inch the father he should’ve been back then.

A deep, deep dive into unspeakable memories and their unimaginably shocking legacy.