FIRE IN THE STARS

A Canadian aid worker returns from a deeply traumatic experience in Nigeria to find even more challenging adventures awaiting her in the wilds of Newfoundland.

As they worked alongside each other against Boko Haram, Amanda Doucette and her old friend Phil Cousins promised they’d do whatever it took to help each other heal once they got back home. Now Phil, who’s obviously in need of a lot more healing, has asked Amanda to join him on a camping trip from his home in Grand Falls in the hope that the wilderness will quiet his demons. When she arrives, however, Amanda learns that Phil has already set off with his 11-year-old son, Tyler, inexplicably leaving his cellphone behind. Amanda, shortly joined by an old friend of Phil’s, RCMP Cpl. Chris Tymko, is left to follow his trail. As she talks with other Mounties at St. Anthony and Roddickton, where she hears about sightings of Phil tantalizingly just ahead, it gradually becomes clear that nothing about Phil’s disappearance is clear: not where he’s headed or why he’d take his young son into such a wilderness or whether he’s headed anywhere in particular or whether he intends Amanda to join him. But the line of dead bodies that begins to dot the trail makes it clear that Phil has gotten mixed up in something just as dangerous as his Nigerian rescue mission but not whether he’s a victim or a killer.

Launching a new series, Fradkin (The Night Thief, 2015, etc.) scores low for mystery, high for wilderness adventure, and off the charts for her portrait of the bleak, beautiful Newfoundland landscape.