Leave No Footprints

It’s the middle of the night when Beth Watson sneaks out of the house, steals a car, and drives, desperate to run from what she’s seen, what happened to Jack. She drives across several states until she ends up in a sleepy little Michigan resort town as the summer season draws to a close. All Beth wants to do is escape, to stay unnoticed, to fly under the radar. But tiny Beaumont is a town with big secrets, some very like the ones she’s fled from, and she arrives in town at the same time a murderer strikes.

Beth, who has never gone to school, never held a job, and isn’t even sure if 16 is her real age, enlists the help of a protector, Dee, the town’s cafe owner, who sees a little of herself in Beth. Beth has to jump into a world she’s never known–a world of other teens, of cell phones and computers, cliques and bullying, girlfriends and boyfriends. And killing. So much killing. When the murderer strikes again, and again, Beth is certain her plans to start a new life are over and the worst is yet to come.

J.D. Shaw takes on child abuse, bullying, the deep need teens have to be loved and accepted, and the risks they’ll take to gain that love. Despite the horrors she’s faced, Beth is a character all teens can identify with. Leave No Footprints is a deftly drawn portrait of a young woman whose past is a mystery even to herself, but who, like most kids, just wants to be normal–if only she can escape her past. –Joanne Dahme, author of Tombstone Tea and Contagion