I’ve long been a sucker for American stories set away from the intensity of their cities and in the country’s open heart: those wide endless prairies; the sheriffs who know everyone and ride the thin line between being adored and feared; that down-home American cheesiness that hides an undercurrent of blood as much as the seeds of their farmland. Everyone is suspicious, and a suspect; everyone speaks their minds, except when they are hiding something. And teenage girls go out of their minds in desperation to leave for bigger and better places. Sometimes they don’t make it further than an early marriage and another farm down the road; sometimes, like Hattie Hoffman, they don’t even make it that far before being discovered in an abandoned barn, stabbed to death – her acting career, her life, cut short.

Mejia’s novel follows multiple points of view, all genuine, all heartbreaking in their own ways, all unhappy with something, someone, or somewhere. Hattie herself, in the lead-up to her death, is consumed by the idea of escape and an unknown love. Del, the worn-out sheriff, is trying to find out who killed his best friend’s daughter. And then there’s Peter, a teacher forced by circumstance into a life he is desperate to be out of. Who in this town is unhappy enough to kill a teenage girl? To slash her face into an unrecognisable version of herself?

This book is full of tiny, genuine moments – in a family, between friends, describing the landscape – that elevate this tale, and make Pine Valley a place worth visiting, even when you don’t know who might be living there.

Fiona Hardy