We Are All the Same in the Dark by Julia Heaberlin

First sentence: "It takes about eight to ten hours to hand-dig a grave, more if you was doing it in the dark."  The novel begins with an epigraph, an excerpt from a crime documentary--the speaker is a cemetery gravedigger.  

The sentence grabs the attention and hints of theme without giving anything away.  Aside from graves, buried things becomes an essential part of the We Are All the Same in the Dark.  

Julia Heaberlin is skilled at keeping the reader in the dark...in the best possible way.  If you've read any of her previous books, you know that you will have plenty of clues and still find it difficult to predict what will happen.  Layer after layer is uncovered--personalities, memories, secrets, lies.  Expectations must be adjusted with additional information.  Seriously adjusted.  

The novel is dominated by three strong female characters, one of which has been missing for ten years and is presumed dead.  Ten years later, Wyatt, whose sister Trumanell disappeared a decade previously, discovers a young girl in a pasture by the side of the road.  He debates about what to do, she is surrounded by dandelions which has an association for Wyatt that both intrigues and frightens him.  

He takes the girl home, feeling almost as if he has been cursed.  When small town cop Odette arrives, she questions the girl who refuses to speak.  Odette's voice takes over the novel, but five years later the girl's voice will be added for the last portion of the novel.  

Odette was sixteen when she lost her leg in a car accident on the same night Trumanell disappeared, and she refuses to give up her quest to find out what happened.  In the meantime, she feels a strong connection to the girl Angel/Angie.  Odette knows the girl is running from something bad, and as an amputee, Odette feels connected to the girl who has only one eye.  She has a feeling that their meeting was somehow destined.

   

from description:  The discovery of a girl abandoned by the side of the road threatens to unearth the long-buried secrets of a Texas town's legendary cold case in this superb, atmospheric novel from the internationally bestselling author of Black-Eyed Susans.

Julia Heaberlin  knows how to pull the reader in.  Her characters are complex, her sentences and paragraphs flow easily, she uses structure to separate elements of the story until she is ready to bring them together.   

Her relationship with Texas is evident in each of her books, and she writes beautifully. Her settings, her complex characters, her suspenseful plots, and her ability to reveal just enough and not too much make her books exceptional.

(Dandelion heads have 150-200 seeds, and a single plant, up to 15,000 seeds to be carried by the wind.  The plant is a survivor.  It is also associated with wishes, hopes, dreams that fly into the wind seeking a receptive soil. )

NetGalley/Random House/Ballentine

Mystery/Thriller.  Aug. 11, 2020. Print length:  352 pages.