They never found Leah Parata. Not a boot, not a backpack, not a turquoise beanie. After she left me that day, she vanished off the face of the earth.
A close-knit community is ripped apart by disturbing revelations that cast new light on a young woman’s disappearance twenty-five years ago.
After years of living overseas, Emily Kirkland returns to New Zealand to care for her father, Felix, who suffers from dementia. As his memory fades and his guard slips, she begins to understand him for the first time – and to glimpse shattering truths about his past. Truths she’d rather were kept buried.
Charity Norman is the bestselling author of six books, the last of which, The Secrets of Strangers (2017), was shortlisted for Best Crime Novel in the Ngaio Marsh Awards for Crime Fiction, and for Best International Crime Fiction in the Ned Kelly Awards. Her latest book, Remember Me, is a heartfelt, page-turning suspense novel that will appeal to readers of Jodi Picoult and Liane Moriarty.
Set in a small New Zealand community, Remember Me follows Emily Kirkland who returns to her childhood home to care for her ageing father Felix who has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The story shifts back and forth between the present day and twenty-five years earlier when Leah Parata, a brilliant young academic and Emily’s next-door neighbour, goes hiking in the woods one day, vanishing without a trace. Norman deftly weaves together both timelines to create an engrossing, slow-burn mystery that builds to a devastating and unexpected end.
Though Remember Me might appear from the outset to be a novel about a missing woman, it is the changing relationship between Emily and her father that sits at the heart and soul of this story. Cold and distant during her youth, Emily finally has a chance to bond with her father, just as this tragic disease begins to take root. While caring for him, Emily learns more about Felix and his past than she ever did growing up, seeing him as if for the first time. Through their relationship, Norman offers readers a poignant portrayal of Alzheimer’s and caring for a loved one with a degenerative illness.
Powerful and heartbreaking, Remember Me is a thought-provoking story that will stay with readers long after they’ve turned the final page.
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