The Lost Girl of Goose Creek

A novel in verse about rebuilding a life after everything is taken from you. When sixteen-year-old Etta Jacobs went missing, the small town of Goose Creek, Montana went into a panic. But after years of searching, the trail went cold and everyone wrote her off as dead. She left behind her girlfriend Lexa and a grieving family, including a father whose health worsens every day.

Only she's not dead. She's been held in an underground cellar for eight years, abused by a man whose name she doesn't know. Reading her favorite fantasy book over and over to escape the abuse, she slowly begins to lose track of what's fiction and what's real. By the time freedom comes, Etta confuses herself for the main character in the book - a girl named Mathilde who suffers her own story of abuse.

The world Etta returns to doesn't know what to make of her, and she can't tell what's real. She doesn't even know how to be a person anymore, let alone reconnect with her family and girlfriend. How can she learn to exist again when for so many years she just tried to hide?

And who is she really, Etta or Mathilde?