When a severed hand washes ashore in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach, Florida, the lives of two women-a lonely writer obsessed with the unsolved murder of her mother’s best friend and a panicked wife whose husband has disappeared with their children-collide as the world shutters in the pandemic lockdown of 2020.

Reef Road is magnificent. It feels utterly real, a novel of deeply personal context. It swerves between truth and lies-the lies that lead to an even deeper-and more devastating-truth. Though pure fiction, it reads as compellingly as a mixture of memoir and expose. It has left me shaken to the core. Deborah Goodrich Royce writes with brilliant understanding of the mystery and occasional grace of trauma. -Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author

A young woman’s life seems perfect until her family goes missing. A writer lives alone with her dog and collects arcane murder statistics. What each of them stands to lose as they sneak around the do-not-enter tape blocking Reef Road beach is exposed by the steady tightening of the cincture encircling them.

In a nod to the true crime that inspired it, Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Reef Road probes unhealed generational scars in a wrenching and original work of fiction. It is both stunning and sexy and, like a bystander surprised by a curtain left open, you won’t be able to look away.